🇺🇸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Scam Artist Admits to Stealing Over 1,000 Unpublished Manunoscripts Through Online Fraud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A 30-year-old Italian man has admitted his guilt in the theft of over a thousand unpublished literary manunoscripts.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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🇪🇬 A cargo vessel ran aground in Egypt's Suez Canal, according to Leth Agencies, a canal services firm, as well as satellite tracking data analyzed by the media

▪️The vessel, called MV Glory, was stranded in a single-lane stretch of canal near the city of Qantara in the province of Ismailia.

▪️The cause of the incident remains unclear, as well as its impact on shipping traffic.

▪️In 2021, global trade was significantly affected when the Panama-flagged container ship Ever Given ran aground in the waterway, blocking it for six days

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❄️ A resident of Russia's Bashkortostan republic made a traffic police officer and a police car out of snow and ice.

The composition made a splash: drunk drivers were afraid to leave their driveways on vacation. Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs expressed gratitude to the author of the sculpture.

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🦠 Around 930,000 chickens will be culled on Monday in the Japanese prefecture of Ibaraki due to the outbreak of bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry said.

▪️ Authorities have recently found a great number of dead chickens in the prefecture. The further genetic analysis has confirmed the presence of highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza. It has become the 56th case in the country since fall.

▪️ In 2022, 9.98 million were culled, which is a new high for Japan, the local media reported, citing the Agriculture Ministry. The previous record was set in 2020, with 9.87 birds being culled in that year.

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🇧🇷 At least five journalists were attacked or had their equipment broken while covering the Sunday protests in Brazil, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) said on Monday.

💬 "At least five journalists were attacked, had their their equipment broken or stolen," Abraji wrote on Twitter, citing data provided by the federal district union of professional journalists.

The organization condemned attacks on journalists who "were only doing their job of monitoring and reporting on events

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🇨🇳 The central bank of China began the week by strengthening the national currency amid COVID-19 restrictions’ lifting for those entering from abroad, setting the yuan against the US dollar at 6.8265 on Monday.

▪️ The yuan's average exchange rate against the US dollar on Monday has risen by 647 basis points to 6.8265 - its highest level since August 22, 2022.

▪️ In March 2022, the Chinese authorities announced their intention to maintain a stable yuan exchange rate and to implement a prudent monetary policy with a view to preventing financial risks and supporting economic growth.

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⚡️ Latest statements made by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov:

▪️ Russian and French leaders maintain contacts, which are paused now, but they were useful earlier;

▪️ Kremlin on the events in Brazil: we condemn the actions of riot instigators, and support the efforts of President Da Silva to restore order;

▪️ Western arms deliveries to Kiev will only 'prolong the suffering' of Ukrainians.

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