Sputnik Editor's Espionage Charges Aim to 'Cover Up' Latvia Limiting Free Speech: Lawyer

Latvia's espionage accusation of Moscow-based Sputnik Lithuania editor Marat Kasem aims to "cover up" the country's actions to restrict freedom of speech, Anatoly Kapustin, head of the Russian branch of the International Law Association, told Sputnik on Sunday.

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‘Unfit for Office’: Netizens Troll Biden Over Reports of 2024 Campaign Launch

Speaking at a post-mid-term election in November, Joe Biden made it clear that he intends to seek another presidential term, but that it was ultimately a “family decision”, due to be announced “early next year”.

Netizens have hit out at US President Joe Biden amid reports that he is "readying the details around his 2024 re­election campaign."

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⚡️Ukraine's special services have prepared a large-scale anti-Russian provocation in the Kharkov region, opening graves in several cemeteries - Russia's MoD.

📹Russian Terminator BMPT in action as part of the special military operation in Ukraine (video courtesy of Russia’s MoD)

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⚡️A group of supporters of the former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has broken a security blockade and invaded the Planalto Palace.

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🇺🇸Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday that illegal immigrants are being expelled from the streets of the border city of El Paso with their tent camps demolished in preparation for the arrival of US President Joe Biden.

📌Biden is expected to visit El Paso later in the day, where he will familiarize himself with the migration situation on the US southern border for the first time since the beginning of his presidency.

💬"El Paso rushes to remove illegal immigrants and migrant camps that are crowding downtown before Biden arrives. Predictable. Biden does not want America to see the chaos that he has caused on the border. This is just a photo op and a game of pretend," the governor tweeted.

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📹WATCH: Forty men and women took part in the "Misogi" ritual at the Teppozu Inari Shrine in Tokyo on Sunday.

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📹 Protesters took to the streets of El Paso, Texas ahead of Joe Biden’s visit to the border city. Around 300 migrants have taken refuge on sidewalks outside the Sacred Heart Church, with some afraid to seek more formal shelter amid new restrictions meant to crack down on illegal border crossings.

▪️ Joe Biden announced last week that Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans will be expelled to Mexico if they enter the US illegally – an expansion of the Title 42 pandemic-era immigration policy.

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Scam Artist Admits to Stealing Over 1,000 Unpublished Manunoscripts Through Online Fraud

The stolen manunoscripts have apparently never surfaced online and no attempt to ransom them has been made, with the thief's motives thus remaining unclear at this point.

A 30-year-old Italian man has admitted his guilt in the theft of over a thousand unpublished literary manunoscripts.

Filippo Bernardini, who worked in London for prominent publishing company Simon & Schuster, scammed writers out of their works by impersonating publishers and agents, using fake email accounts whose domain names resembled those of legitimate enterprises.

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📹WATCH: Russian engineers conduct mine clearance in Mariupol (video courtesy of Russia’s MoD).

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❗️The US-led international coalition against Daesh* denied media reports saying that air-defense systems of the Ayn al Asad air base in western Iraq, at which US troops are deployed, shot down a drone flying over it, a source in the coalition told Sputnik on Sunday.

📌Earlier in the day, the Arabic broadcaster Al-Hadath reported that forces of the international coalition shot down an unknown drone over its air base. There were no casualties or damage reported.

💬“These reports are not true, the Iraqi armed forces are conducting military exercise,” the source said.
The Ayn al Asad air base located in the Anbar province frequently comes under shelling, for which the US blames alleged pro-Iranian armed groups.

* Daesh (also known as ISIL/ISIS/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries

📹 Night patrol: Russian Su-30SM and Su-35S perform combat missions under the veil of darkness (video courtesy of Russia’s MoD)

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China Using ‘Petroyuan’ in Oil Imports May Lead to New World Energy Order

December saw Chinese President Xi Jinping meet the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council nations. Xi said at the time that Beijing has outlined five "priority" areas in its relations with the Gulf countries for the coming years, including the settlement of bilateral oil and gas transactions in the Chinese yuan.

China’s drive to use the yuan when buying oil from Gulf nations may result in the creation of a new world energy order, a UK newspaper has reported.

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James Webb Telescope Exposes Dawn of Universe Galactic Features

The images supplied by the telescope may lead to changes in the existing theoretical models of galactic evolution.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has procured yet another set of spectacular images from outer space, capturing sights from several billion years ago.

The new images depict two galaxies, EGS-23205 and EGS-24268, featuring the so-called stellar bars which are “elongated features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks,” according to a press release by the University of Texas at Austin.

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Biden Makes First Public Comment About Pro-Bolsonaro Rioters, 400 Reportedly Arrested So Far

On Sunday supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the National Congress building in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. The rioters, who are seeking to keep Bolsonaro in power despite President Lula da Silva's election win in October, rushed past police and caused damage to government buildings.

US President Joe Biden called the pro-Bolsonaro attack on government buildings "outrageous". It was Biden's first comment about the riot in Brasilia, during which supporters of Brazil's former president broke into the country's congressional building, Supreme Court, and presidential palace. Across social media some have called the riot an "attack on democracy".

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🇺🇸🇨🇦 US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will gather in Mexico City this week to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) for their first summit since late 2021. It also marks the first time a US leader has visited Mexico in nearly a decade.

▪️ Climate change, drug trafficking, and immigration issues will most likely be the focus of the North American Summit as Biden, who is now entering his third year as president, has been heavily criticized on immigration issues by both Democrats and Republicans. US Customs and Border Protection reported a record-breaking number of nearly 2.4 million border encounters just last year.

▪️ The "three amigos" will have to discuss more than immigration, though, as an array of other difficult issues will also be on the table, including the heavy flow of fentanyl across the US border which killed more than 100,000 people in 2021 alone.

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🇩🇪 Nearly two-thirds of Germans want Christine Lambrecht 's resignation as German Defense Minister, according to a new study conducted by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA).

📊 The INSA poll showed that 64% of respondents think Lambrecht should step down. Only 15% said they wanted the defense minister to remain in her post and only 9% assessed her performance as positive.

📌 The study showed that 59% of Germans disapprove of Lambrecht’s performance. A total of 1,001 respondents participated in the poll.

😡 The defense minister has been under fire for her handling of the country’s defense policy and more recently for speaking lightly of the conflict in Ukraine during her New Year address.

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Swedish PM on Stalled NATO Bid: Turkey Wants Things Stockholm ‘Cannot Give’

In May 2022, Sweden and neighboring Finland broke with decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the US-led alliance, citing a change in their security landscape following Russia's special operation in Ukraine.

Despite the considerable lengths Stockholm has gone to in its attempts to please Turkey, Ankara has time and again stressed that more was needed to win its full backing for Sweden’s NATO bid. Turkey has made some demands that Sweden cannot meet, the Nordic nation’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said.

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🇨🇳 China has successfully launched the Shijian-23 satellite, completing its first space launch this year, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) informs.

🚀 The launch was carried out on Monday using a modified version of the Long March-7 carrier rocket, at 6:00 a.m. local time (22:00 GMT on Sunday), CASC said.

🛰 The Shijian-23 scientific research satellite was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan.

📌 It later entered its planned orbit successfully, CASC said.

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