🔎The U.S. has offered a deal to Russia to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said Wednesday.

Blinken’s comments marked the first time the U.S. government has publicly revealed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday at her trial.

“We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and, I hope, to move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.

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🚨 Two people were arrested in Florida for human trafficking three girls, including a 14-year-old from a foster home, according to authorities.

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said Marc Phillips Dinkel's, 33, of Vero Beach, and Taylor Brandt, 19, of Palm Bay, are facing multiple charges.

As a result of the very complex investigation, agents found evidence that both Brandt and Dinkels had recruited three juvenile females to perform sex acts with them for money!!" Brevard County Sheriff's Office noted in a Facebook post. "In several of the instances, Dinkels videotaped the sex acts that included both he and Brandt being sexually active with the juveniles."

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✈️ Frontier and Spirit first announced the proposed merger in February, a move that would’ve combined the two budget airlines to create the fifth largest in the US. But not everything went as planned — JetBlue countered Frontier’s initial $2.9 billion offer with an attractive all-cash $3.6 billion bid that Spirit later rejected. In May, JetBlue launched a hostile takeover of Spirit Airlines and kept attempting to sweeten the deal by increasing its offer.

The North American Alliance is supposed to make it easier for passengers to board connecting flights from either service, as well as introduce more routes to both cities, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) believes it could harm the airline industry. Last September, the DOJ filed an antitrust complaint against the NEA last September, arguing it decreases competition and harms passengers by consolidating the airline industry.

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🔋 Electric automaker Rivian is laying off around 6 percent of its 14,000 employees, or around 800 people, Amy Mast, a spokesperson for the company, confirmed in an email. The company made the decision in part to speed up development on future versions of its electric trucks and SUVs, she said.

The company is just starting to ramp up production of its pickups, SUVs, and delivery vans for Amazon. In its most recent report, the company said it had produced around 2,553 vehicles, delivered 1,227, and was still planning on having made 25,000 by the end of the year. But the company also lost an incredible amount of money last quarter: around $1.59 billion.

Rivian has been making changes recently in an attempt to cut costs, according to an email CEO RJ Scaringe sent to employees after reports started circulating that it was considering layoffs.

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🛰 Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has told NASA that it intends to remain in the program until at least 2028. Roscosmos plans to stay involved with the ISS until it gets a new Russian space station up and running, with 2028 as the target date.

Russia hoped to transition focus to a new space station it was developing called the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS). NASA and Roscosmos are the two biggest partners on the International Space Station, and both entities are tasked with operating the vehicle and maintaining a continuous human presence on the ISS while in orbit. 

NASA still plans to operate the vehicle until 2030, and it appears that Roscosmos will be on board for most of that time.

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❗️ An earthquake of magnitude 6.1 has struck Antofagasta in Chile - EMSC

📹Footage shows Russian military servicemen clearing mines in the liberated territories of the Kharkov region

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🇺🇸Is Kamala Harris indicating that she has the top job in her sights?

As the Democrats forecast that Biden won't run for a second term, senior members of the party are beginning to raise their profile and US vice-president Kamala Harris is no exception: she has stepped up visits to key states and held talks with senior fundraisers, The Times reports.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸American actor Steven Seagal, who holds US and Russian passports, told Sputnik that he will never give up Russian citizenship despite the growing rift between Russia and the West.
"I will never give up Russian passport. And I face Russophobia every day," the 70-year-old said, without elaborating.

He also said he had "plenty of relations somewhere," in the Asian Russian regions: Buryatia, Yakutia, Irkutsk, and the Primorsky Krai. He also suggested that he "might have" some relations in Ukraine.

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📉Meta*'s income is falling for the first time since it went public (it was then called Facebook*)

The company's revenue for the second quarter was $28.82 billion, down from $29.07 billion a year earlier.

“We seem to have entered an economic downturn that will have a broad impact on the digital advertising business,” Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call.

*Meta, Facebook, and Instagram are banned in Russia over extremist activities.

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🇺🇸The US unveils its third political party - report

A host of former Democrat and Republican politicians who have found themselves dissatisfied with America’s present two-party system, have proclaimed that the new national political party will appeal to millions of voters.

▪️The party, named Forward, is co-chaired by former Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey

▪️The party's basic ideas are to “reinvigorate a fair, flourishing economy” and to “give Americans more choices in elections, more confidence in a government that works, and more say in our future”. The party claims that it has its own way to solve “big issues facing America”: "Not Left. Not Right. Forward”

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“'Oh dad, there’s a plane flying,' and then the bomb landed.” A resident of the Luganskaya settlement in the Lugansk People's Republic describes how his five-year-old son was killed by a Ukrainian airstrike.

The people responsible for the boy's death have yet to be found: no investigation was conducted by Kiev for eight years.

⚡Talks on exchange of prisoners between Russia and the US underway, they should take into account interests of both parties - Moscow

The Ukrainian army shells Severodonetsk (LPR) “to leave scorched-earth behind, to leave just ruins,” a resident of Severodonetsk says, pointing out that Ukraine commits atrocities and blames Moscow for them.

🗣 “This is how we live – by candlelight and without any water," the woman says

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Borrell’s complaint on being less popular than Lavrov in media justified, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says

⚡️ Peskov described as "fake" American data about losses sustained by the Russian army in Ukraine: "Nowadays, even the most reputable newspapers spread all kinds of fake news"

🇰🇵 Kim Jong-un said the "powerful force" of the DPRK is ready to eliminate "Yoon Suk-yeol's regime and his army" in South Korea as the neighboring democracy "devises tactics for a military confrontation". Kim added in a speech to mark the anniversary of the end of the Korean War in 1953, that he is ready for any battle with the US.

The North Korean leader underlined that “US imperialists are pushing the South Korean authorities into a suicidal confrontation” with the DPRK, the state’s official Korean Central News Agency reports

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Russia’s top diplomat held talks today with the Chinese FM Wang Yi. They meet in the hallway of the SCO ministerial summit venue with Lavrov assuring Wang Yi that he’s among friends. China is also one of the SCO founding members, which formed the alliance with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan in 1996, paving road for other nations to join. The organization is headquartered in Beijing. While first documents adopted by the bloc were related to military co-operation and border security, its current priorities go far beyond that, with member nations working together in the areas of transportation, energy, telecommunications, finance.

📹Life-threatening floods in Hazard, Kentucky: More than 10 inches of rain has fallen, numerous homes have been severely flooded, and cars are being washed away, reports say

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