🇮🇱 Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu called on law enforcement to act against threats to murder him that were disseminated online.

According to Israeli media, the remarks came late Saturday in response to a social media post by a former air force pilot and an anti-government protest figure Ze'ev Raz.

"If a sitting prime minister assumes dictatorial powers, this prime minister is bound to die, simply like that, along with his ministers and his followers," allegedly said Raz. On Saturday night, the Israeli police launched a probe into the matter, the report said.

Raz reportedly backtracked on his comments, saying that he did not identify with that post and noting that it was "a quote from a person who retracted it."

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❗️Rocket sirens sounded across the Israeli city of Sderot and other towns near the Gaza border on Sunday evening, according to the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson's unit. Local residents reported no explosions on the ground.

According to media reports, sirens were sounded in the areas of Sapir College, Gevim, Ivim, Nir Am and Or Haner. The IDF is looking into the cause.

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Republicans Call for Probe, Biden's Resignation Amid 'Chinese Spy Balloon' Blunder

“The catastrophic Chinese Spy Balloon Spectacle clearly threatened American families from Alaska to my home community in South Carolina and confirms President Biden and Vice President Harris should resign,” House Armed Services Committee member Joe Wilson of South Carolina wrote in a multi-part Twitter thread Saturday night.

A few pro-Biden media personalities rushed to defend the White House, with infamous Russiagater Keith Olbermann calling Wilson an “a**clown” and suggesting the lawmaker should “stop, resign,” and “leave the country.”

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Ex-Israeli PM Reveals 'Big Concessions' Putin, Zelensky Were Ready to Make Before West Killed Talks

What role did former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett play in the first weeks of the Ukrainian crisis? What concessions were Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky apparently ready to make to stop the bloodshed? How did the West intervene to sabotage the peace negotiations?

Read Bennett's explosive revelations here

📹 A group of Ukrainian nationalists attempted to disrupt a rally held in Paris on Saturday by French communists in honor of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad.

The nationalists tried to drown out the speeches of the participants of the memorial action, but police intervened. After the incident, the rally continued as planned.

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Making the Case for War: 20 Years Ago, Colin Powell Lied to the UN

How was the Bush administration able to sell a war based on dubious intelligence not only to the American people, but also to much of the international community? Perhaps even more importantly, did the US political and military leadership learn any lessons from its disastrous invasion?

Sputnik spoke to former Pentagon and State Department officials who witnessed firsthand the Bush administration’s drift to war and spoke out against it.

Read more here

Spycraft or Not, Shootdown of Chinese Weather Balloon Using 5th-Gen Jet Looks ‘Silly’, Observer Says

The incident has certainly given Washington the pretext it needs to feed anti-China hysteria amid tectonic shifts being seen in the global geopolitical and economic order, former Department of Defense analyst-turned anti-war whistleblower and activist Karen Kwiatkowski has told Sputnik.

"The Chinese response may have been to chuckle, or it helped inform the Chinese government as to the air defense capabilities of the US, or both. Obviously, the US if it is determined that it belatedly shot down a weather balloon with a 5th generation fighter jet with a standoff air-to-air Sidewinder missile, it feeds into the global narrative of the US military as an offensively oriented warmonger, and kind of silly," Kwiatkowski stressed.

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🎭 Venice Carnival kicks off in full force first time since pandemic

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🐋 Beluga whales arrived in the Far Eastern Russian city of Vladivostok for snacks

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🦁 Three-month-old lion cubs abandoned by mother being cared for in Mariupol Zoo

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Iraqi Ex-Intelligence Officer Breaks Down US 2003 Invasion Preparations

“If you look at the slogans of the US Secretary of State at that time (e.g. the "New Middle East"), this is exactly what they wanted to demonstrate. The invasion of Iraq was the first step to demonstrate the unrestrained and unpunished US policy. The next step was to divide Syria and then other countries in the region,” says Khaled Al-Douri, a key official of the US section of Iraqi intelligence before the 2003 invasion, in an interview with Sputnik discussing Powell’s lies at the UN and their consequences.

“The US got money from the resale of Iraqi oil and is still getting it. They are not happy with the growing influence of Iran in the country, because they look at us as a colony. But they are not welcome here; the Iraqis are saying on every possible platform that America has done a reckless act and destroyed the sovereignty of Iraq.”

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🪁 Ride the wind: Extreme athletes compete in Russian Snow Kiting Championships

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