🥺 The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has raised an alarm about the “devastating” decline of the global wildlife population over the past 50 years, with several species facing risk of extinction.

😟 In the Living Planet Report launched on Thursday by the WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL), experts highlighted that wildlife populations fell on average by 69 percent between 1970 and 2018.

▪️ Latin America and the Caribbean have seen the highest loss of diversity at 94 percent, followed by Africa at 66 percent, Asia-Pacific at 55 percent, North America at 20 percent and Europe and Central Asia at 18 percent.

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🇺🇳 The adoption of the UN General Assembly resolution not recognizing the accession of new territories to Russia demonstrated that the West is solving its geopolitical tasks, with this confrontational initiative aimed at prolonging the conflict, the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.

💬 "The adoption of the resolution reaffirmed that the West is trying, first of all, to solve its own geopolitical tasks as opposed to Russia, to maintain an elusive monopoly in world affairs, and to split a number of member states of the General Assembly. It is also obvious that this confrontational initiative is not aimed at finding ways for a peaceful settlement, but at prolonging the conflict in Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement.

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👀 🤝 Russia and China should keep an eagle eye on a new US national security strategy, carefully and systematically responding to all challenges, Zhou Rong, senior research fellow from China’s Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies, has told Sputnik.

▪️ According to Zhou, “the US views Russia's legitimate security concerns as threats and challenges to America’s sphere of influence in Europe, while the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is seen as a prelude to a direct confrontation between the US and Russia”.

▪️ In the same vein, he added, the US “cannot accept China's strategic rise and watch Beijing overtake Washington in technology and overall power in the near future”.

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🔺 You’re obsessed and it’s showing: Joe Biden’s long-awaited National Security Strategy revolves around two countries… You have one guess.
🔺 As Putin says Nord Stream 2 is ready for gas supplies to Europe, Scott Ritter joins us to discuss who might be upset about this news.
🔺We didn’t mean that: PayPal backed away from its dystopian “misinformation” policy.

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🇹🇼Taiwan has reopened to tourists in masse after lifting some of the world’s longest-lasting pandemic border controls. Visitors began arriving on the island on Thursday without needing quarantine or PCR tests for the first time in more than two and a half years.

Taiwanese officials welcomed the first group of visitors arriving on a flight from Bangkok shortly after midnight at the island’s main international airport near Taipei. Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-Chung told reporters the island’s reopening was a chance to “bring back to life and rebuild cross-border tourism.”

Taiwan is the last major economy to lift COVID-19 quarantine apart from mainland China, which has stuck to an ultra-strict “zero COVID” policy despite the global trend towards living with the virus. Japan and Hong Kong recently dropped pandemic-related border restrictions as part of efforts to revive their battered travel industries.

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🇻🇪🇺🇸🇲🇽The United States and Mexico have announced a joint migration plan to see most Venezuelan asylum seekers trying to enter the US through its southern border sent back to Mexico while granting access to the US to thousands of others who come by air.

The effort, announced late on Wednesday, aims to address the growing number of Venezuelans arriving at the US-Mexico border.

Under the new program, which came into effect immediately, up to 24,000 Venezuelans will be allowed to enter the US by air, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said. Others who try to enter the US through the border without documentation will be returned to Mexico. “These actions make clear that there is a lawful and orderly way for Venezuelans to enter the United States, and lawful entry is the only way,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

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🔹The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump's plea to step into the legal fight over the FBI search of his Florida estate.

The justices did not otherwise comment in turning away Trump's emergency appeal. Trump had pressed the court on an issue relating to classified documents seized in the search authorized by a federal judge of Mar-a-Lago.

The Trump team was asking the justices to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

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🖥️ Netflix Launches Ad-Based Tier for $6.99

On November 3, Netflix customers will be able to sign up for the “Basic with Ads” plan. It will be available in the US, UK, Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, and Australia. In the US, it will cost $6.99 a month, with other countries having similar prices in their local currency.

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▪️North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Friday toward its eastern waters and flew warplanes near its border with South Korea, Seoul's military said. The move will only add to regional tensions, already heightened by the North's recent barrage of weapons tests.

Additionally, Seoul's military said it had scrambled fighter jets when around 10 North Korean military aircraft flew close to the border between the two countries. The development comes less than 24 hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised long-range cruise missile tests.

South Korea scrambled fighter jets after military aircraft from the North flew close to the Special Reconnaissance Line. The North responded to what it deemed "provocative action" from its southern neighbor. Kim described the tests as demonstrating Pyongyang's readiness for "actual war."

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🇬🇧💸The value of sterling fell against the dollar on Wednesday after the Bank of England insisted it would not extend a multibillion-pound package of support drawn up to calm the financial markets. During overnight trading, the sterling dropped by more than 1 cent to below $1.10 for the first time this month.

Andrew Bailey, the central bank's governor, said an emergency 65-billion-pound ($72 billion) bond-buying program, implemented to protect pension funds, will end on Friday.

The government's fiscal plans caused borrowing costs to soar and pushed pension funds close to collapse after they were forced to raise money at short notice and sell bonds. The IMF urged the United Kingdom government this week to change its policy to calm the financial markets and "change the trajectory" of interest rates, The Guardian reported.

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🦈Study proves orcas kill great white sharks. Marine biologists and seafarers have long suspected that orcas feast on great whites, mostly due to unconfirmed eye-witness accounts and some instances of partially-eaten carcasses washing ashore.

This week scientists from Rhodes and Stellenbosch universities in South Africa released extended drone and helicopter footage captured during the summer that provides irrefutable proof that killer whales use their famed pack hunting skills to prey on the largest shark species.

"This behavior has never been witnessed in detail before, and certainly never from the air," said Alison Towner, a shark biologist from Rhodes and lead author of the paper, published in the journal Ecology.

The footage shows three orcas encircling and eventually disemboweling a great white shark. Study authors say the small pod killed at least three sharks during an hour-long hunt.

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🧐 JPMorgan Chase Cuts Off Ye West. According to a screenshot posted by conservative firebrand Candace Owens, Ye West, formerly known as Kanye West, has been banned from using JPMorgan Chase bank and will have to remove his funds held by Yeezy, LLC and its affiliated accounts by November 21.

It is unclear why the bank decided to end its relationship with West and Yeezy, LLC. Another individual was named in the letter, but their identity is unknown because Owens blocked it out to “protect their privacy.”

Ye has been at the center of several political controversies. He ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020 and has been friendly with Donald Trump recently, often sporting a Make America Great Again hat in photos. More recently, he wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt to the Paris Fashion Week and suggested on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson's show that executives at clothing outlet the Gap may have known about the Uvalde Texas elementary school shooting before it happened.

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📹 "The EU itself is now effectively becoming a fascist entity": A British journalist on how Western authorities are persecuting the Donbass referendum observers.

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⚡️Price cap on Russian energy that G7 countries aim to impose will not work — Iran's deputy oil minister to Sputnik

🕔 Rebellious Tory MPs have given UK Prime Minister Liz Truss 17 days to save her job as she considers making possible new U-turns on the country’s tax-cutting mini-budget, the Daily Mail has reported.

▪️ The lawmakers purportedly “line up” ex-Chancellor Rishi Sunak and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt as “a joint ticket”

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⚡️Negotiations between delegations of Turkey and Russia on gas hub will begin next week, venue to be determined, source in Ankara tells Sputnik

🤭 Billionaire Elon Musk is under a federal investigation related to his $44bn bid to purchase Twitter, the social media company has said in a court filing made public on Thursday.

▪️ While the filing said Musk was under investigation, it did not say what the focus was, or which federal authorities were investigating.

▪️ Twitter, which sued the entrepreneur in July to force him to close the deal, said attorneys for the Tesla CEO had claimed “investigative privilege” when refusing to hand over the documents it had sought.

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📹 The sixth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), chaired by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, kicked off in Astana.

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⚡️Five people suspected in involvement in the Crimean bridge terrorist act arrested until December 8 — court

❗️ The more the United States is involved in the Ukraine conflict, the higher the risk of provoking a clash between the major nuclear powers, fraught with catastrophic consequences, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has told Sputnik.

💬 "The logic of the current situation is simple: the more the US is involved in supporting the Kiev regime on the battlefield, the more it becomes a party to the military confrontation with Russia, and thus risks provoking a direct armed clash between the largest nuclear powers, fraught with catastrophic consequences," Ryabkov said.

▪️ The deputy minister drew parallels between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the current escalation of tensions between Moscow and Washington, adding that in both cases "we have to talk about the destructive for international security and strategic stability desire of Washington to gain a decisive military and strategic superiority."

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🇳🇱 Netherlands has reportedly frozen patents of Russian oil and gas companies