🇧🇷🤡🔓🇵🇾 — URGENT: The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin), under the current Lula administration, carried out a hacking operation against Paraguayan authorities

➡️ The operation's planning allegedly began when former President Jair Bolsonaro left office, but its execution took place with the authorization of the current Abin director, Luiz Fernando Corrêa. The cyberattack targeted Paraguayan government computers, aiming to obtain classified information regarding tariff negotiations for the Itaipu hydroelectric plant, a long-standing commercial issue between the two countries.

💥 According to testimonies from those involved, the operation resulted in the capture of data from several high-ranking Paraguayan government officials. The hacking took place months before a new agreement was finalized in May 2024 regarding the payments made by Brazil for energy purchased from Paraguay. The agent did not clarify whether the obtained information influenced the negotiations.

✉️ The cyberattack involved the use of Cobalt Strike, a program used to access computer systems. “Cobalt Strike was a tool used to develop an intrusion artifact for Paraguayan government computers to extract data related to the bilateral Itaipu negotiations,” an Abin agent told Brazil’s Federal Police.

💸 Itaipu’s energy is equally divided between Brazil and Paraguay. Since Paraguay consumes less, it sells the surplus to Brazil. The rules for this sale are set in Annex C, which was scheduled for review in 2023. In recent years, Paraguay has pressured Brazil for higher tariffs.

⁉️ This past May, Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy Alexandre Silveira reached an agreement with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña to increase Brazil’s payments, though the final amount was lower than Paraguay’s demands. Around the same time, the Brazilian government also opened discussions on revising Annex C.

✈️ The Abin operation was not conducted from Brazil. Agents made three trips to Chile and Panama to set up virtual servers and launch the attacks. The targets were “authorities directly involved in the negotiations and the pricing per megawatt,” the agent stated. “The Paraguayan Congress, Senate, House of Representatives, and the Presidency were all hacked.”

💬 In a testimony, one agent reported that an Abin executive “personally presented” the operation to the agency’s current director. “Luiz Fernando was thrilled, he really liked it, saying it was the first time he truly felt involved in intelligence work,” the agent told the Federal Police.

⭐ Luiz Fernando Corrêa, a close ally of Lula, is a retired Federal Police officer who led the agency during the leftist’s second term. His appointment to Abin displeased the current Federal Police director, Andrei Rodrigues, who had sought to appoint someone of his own choosing. Behind the scenes, the investigation into Abin’s current leadership is seen as a reflection of this internal power struggle.

Source 🖇

🇺🇸💸📈 — US 3 month treasury yield went from 4.20% to 4.7% as the year of 2025 AD enters on April month

It happens very likely due to traders & market anticipation of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs announced for tomorrow 2 April 2025, the long-awaited 'Liberation Day of America'

These could make inflation go up and affect interest rates, impacting yields directly

🇺🇸🪖🗺 — Relentless USAF C-17 Military cargo planes are flooding into al-Udeid Military base in Qatar, as tensions with Iran grow

🇪🇸❌🇱🇧 — Spanish internal security forces arrested today a Hezbollah cell operating in Barcelona.

According to a Spanish security source, all five cell members belong to Hezbollah and are all Shi’ite.

Their mission is to provide logistic assistance for manufacturing drones and their accessories.

According to Civil Guard sources, the operation is still ongoing and multiple records are being made. There are three detainees in Barcelona for the moment.

This would be the second phase of an operation that the Armed Institute launched in July last year, also in Barcelona.

https://www.elespanol.com/espana/20250401/guardia-civil-lano-nueva-operacion-anterrorista-celula-envio-drones-hezbola-espana/935656535_0.html

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — US State Dept Spox about the events in Middle East:

“The United States is determined to make sure Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon.

Trump has expressed willingness to pursue a deal with Iran.

If the Iranian regime does not want to a deal, the President has other options — and those alternatives will be very bad for Iran.”



🇺🇸❌🇮🇷❗️ — The United States has been pulling air defenses such as THAAD and PATRIOT from other theaters, and moving them into US Armed Forces CENTCOM via airlift for the last few days.

The movements have been tracked, and the news has now been confirmed via NBC.

🇷🇺🇺🇸Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev will visit Washington this week.

As CNN reports, citing sources, he will hold a meeting with Trump representative Steven Witkoff.

They will hold talks "on strengthening relations between the two countries in their quest to end the war in Ukraine."

In order for the State Department to issue Dmitriev a visa, sanctions were temporarily lifted.

It will be the first visit by a senior Russian official to Washington since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - and "will be another step toward a significant warming of relations between the two countries."

🇺🇸🇨🇳 A successful tariff wall is set to slow growth, but the downturn begins with a dollar liquidity crisis in China and ends with a crash in the US as funding pressures ricochet throughout the global banking system. Because they've historically run a large trade surplus with American consumers, Chinese banks have accumulated a large base of Eurodollars, with trade serving as their chief source of dollar funding. The tariff wall appears to target China, which will throttle the flow of Eurodollar deposits to the mainland, worsening offshore dollar funding stresses.

The payment chain is the supply chain in reverse. Since the trade war began just before Covid, China has successfully evaded US duties and kept the dollars flowing through entrepot trade via Mexico, ASEAN, and other countries, continuing to funnel goods to ultimate US consumers. Deploying a tariff fortress across all US imports, however, is an attempt to make that impossible.

Hardly a blind spot, China is of course aware of this vulnerability, having been carefully preparing for it with multiple points of leverage that go far beyond retaliatory tariffs and entrepot trade.

Chinese banks will transfer Eurodollar deposits to their New York branches - keeping them onshore and within the Fed's system - or park them into onshore nostro accounts with big US banks. That appears to have been status quo until sometime in 2023. Since then, Chinese banks have largely made Eurodollar deposits into nostro accounts based in Hong Kong - offshore and outside the Fed's system. Citibank, in particular, reports a uniquely massive and uninsured foreign deposit base, a large portion of which appear to be Chinese claims. An unprecedented 79% of Citi's domestic deposits are uninsured, a lurking solvency issue which would be realized in the event that Chinese banks need to raise dollars.

There are also problems with engineering dollar shortages, namely that if borrowing rates are too punitive, Chinese banks and non-banks would force liquidate dollar-denominated assets - equities, Treasuries and credit - at fire sale prices, an outcome that would not only have adverse consequences for the solvency of Chinese lenders, but for US lenders and the stability of the global financial system.

In any case, the US sees an opportunity for asymmetric pain to develop - hurting China and forcing their banks into a role that is more subservient to the dollar - but likely overestimates its own leverage. This sets the stage for a battle in the ongoing war of Great Powers, and there will be blood.

1. Recession? Crisis? "Detox"?
2. How Foreign Banks Obtain Liquidity
3. 'Chinadollars'
4. Dollar Shortages
5. Shoring Up USD & Hong Kong
6. Gold, Tariffs and the 'Three Strategies'

🔗 Zerohedge

🇺🇸☪️ 402 acres purchased to build an Islamic city that will govern itself in the heart of Texas

🔗 EndWokeness

🇸🇬 Singapore created the world's most efficient healthcare system from scratch in one generation.

They spend $4,000 per person on healthcare. We spend $15,000.

Their secret?

The exact opposite of what American "experts" recommend:

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/jwmares/status/1907101412649234781

🇺🇸🇮🇷 The United States has been pulling air defenses such as THAAD and PATRIOT from other theaters, and moving them into CENTCOM via airlift for the last few days. The movements have been tracked, and the news has now been confirmed via NBC.

🔗 Faytuks Network

🇨🇳❌🇹🇼 China’s Eastern Theatre Command conducted long-range live-fire drills near Taiwan in the East China Sea today, targeting simulated key ports and energy facilities.

➡️ The drills, which involved precision strikes, have reportedly achieved their desired effects.

@TabZLIVE