🗣️ On the latest economic numbers:

“It's meaningless if you go to somebody and say 'Ah, the GDP is growing by 2.6%, but your real wages are falling,' which is the case in the United States, 'so you should feel good.' He or she would say 'Why on earth would I care if the GDP is growing at 2.6%, if all the benefit is going to other people?' If the economy was good, as good as Biden claims, it'd be 20% ahead of any rival in the opinion polls. But instead, his ratings are very bad, and that's because people are not better off,” John Ross, author and economist, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Ross’ analysis in our podcast Political Misfits

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

"More than 3,000 U.S. Sailors and Marines of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) arrived in the Middle East, Aug. 6, as part of a pre-announced Department of Defense deployment," the Naval Forces Central Command said, adding that the reinforcement includes "additional aviation and naval assets."

The Pentagon announced reinforcement plans for its Gulf-stationed fleet in July, citing alleged Iranian threats to international navigation. It said USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall will join USS Thomas Hudner, F-16 and F-35 jets of the US 5th Fleet, whose area of operation encompasses approximately 2.5 million square miles and includes parts of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

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UK could send illegal migrants to tiny South Atlantic island

Successive British governments have struggled to stem the increasing flow of people-trafficking from mainland Europe, which has led to dozens of deaths by drowning at sea. Reception centres and hotels are now overloaded.

The British government has revived plans to house illegally-trafficked asylum claimants on a remote South Atlantic island. Junior Safeguarding Minister Sarah Dines hinted on Monday that former home secretary Priti Patel's three-year-old proposal to house asylum seekers on the tiny Ascension Island could be revived if the Supreme Court rejects the government's appeal against lower court rulings that its deal to resettle asylum-seekers in Rwanda was unlawful.

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🗣️ On political developments in West Africa:

“If you look at, for example, the situation in Niger, right, it's one of the world's largest suppliers of uranium and it supplies it to France and the population lives in poverty. And why? Because France is ripping off Niger and some ruling elites in Niger were ripping off the rest of the population in cahoots with France. So therefore, that's why they got thrown out,” John Ross, author and economist, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Ross’ analysis in our podcast Political Misfits

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

The West continues providing the Ukrainian Armed Forces with weaponry that they use against Russian troops, but are these weapons effective enough to prevail on the battlefield?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently praised performance characteristics of the US and German air defenses - the Patriot and IRIS-T, respectively - that were earlier supplied to Kiev as part of the West’s military assistance to Ukraine.

Zelensky argued that these systems were proving "highly effective" and had "already yielded significant results" by allegedly downing 65 Russian missiles of various kinds and 178 Russian assault drones.

👉 Sputnik checks this out

🔺Nigeria refuses to support ECOWAS plan for military intervention in Niger
🔺How did the Ukrainian military find out about the beginning of the counteroffensive? From TikTok!
🔺US dispatches warships to Alaska in response to "provocative" Chinese-Russian naval patrols

The Critical Hour will cover these and more stories! Tune in to Radio Sputnik at 6pm EST|3pm PST|12am CET via the website or app

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🗣️ On American imperialism in Africa, as well as all over the world:

“You have Niger and the West African countries in the Sahel... So they're setting up an intervention by the puppet regimes of the ECOWAS, and I think it is against Niger and all of these things. And a lot of it does have the stink of desperation on the part of the Biden regime, both for his own political standing and also for the fate and the demise of the American imperialism in Africa and in the world,” Jim Kavanagh, whose work can be found at Jim Kavanagh's Substack, thepolemicist dot net, and Counterpunch, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Kavanagh’s analysis in our podcast The Critical Hour

📹 Russia’s Ka-52 helicopter crews attack (0:21) Ukrainian strongholds in the zone of the special military op

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♥️ 🔌 Electrifying Love: Heartbroken Girl Climbs 80-Foot Tower in India

While it is unclear what the girl hoped to achieve by scaling the tower, the situation escalated after her boyfriend followed her and climbed the tower to persuade her to come down.

👮 By the time police arrived, scores of people gathered around the tower and started filming the incident on their mobile phones. After hours of struggle, the couple was convinced and came down unharmed.

📱The video of the incident has gone viral drawing a lot of reactions from the netizens. One user took a jibe at the situation and wrote, "Couple Goals."

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🚀 Russia has launched a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a military satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.

This was the tenth launch in the interests of the ministry in 2023, and the third from the Plesetsk cosmodrome.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) will receive 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) from the German government to open a production plant in the eastern city of Dresden, a German newspaper reported on Monday, citing government sources.

TSMC will run the plant within a joint venture framework with German engineering and technology company Bosch, semiconductor manufacturer Infineon and Dutch semiconductor designer and producer NXP Semiconductors.

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NATO-trained Ukrainian brigades reportedly suffer heavy losses on the battlefield

The Ukrainian military does not disclose data on the dead and wounded, but the commander of the battalion of the 37th Marine Brigade Alexander said that he lost many people when his fighters stumbled upon minefields and fell under the onslaught of Russian artillery and air strikes, a US newspaper has reported.

The commander also stated that in the initial stages of the so-called counteroffensive, at least one new brigade was so exhausted by losses that it had to be withdrawn from the battlefield to rebuild.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸 'Wishful thinking': Talks on Ukraine in Jeddah can't bring result, Russian envoy to Washington says

“There was no diplomatic success in Jeddah. Washington tried to show a beautiful picture of US support from the 'Global South' states in the effort to isolate Russia,” Anatoly Antonov said.

"Hence the rather expected result of the meeting - the lack of a common position on how to move forward in resolving the crisis in Ukraine. There was no support for Kiev's notorious 'peace formula' at all," he added.

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🇨🇳🇺🇸 Biden signs bill officially formalizing US-Taiwan trade agreement

At present, Taiwan is the United States’ ninth largest trading partner with $90.6 billion in total traded goods in 2020, according to US Trade Representative Office data.

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📹 ‘Be a grown a** man!’: Gold star dad lambasts Biden administration for chaotic US pullout from Afghanistan

💬 ''You all need to resign immediately. Our sons and daughters have more integrity in their little toes than every one of them combined. You owe it to our families here today," said Darin Hoover, the father of Sgt. Hoover, who was killed along with 12 other US service members and at least 170 Afghans in a suicide bomber attack on the Kabul airport in 2021.

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🇺🇸 US greenlights transferring first batch of Abrams tanks to Ukraine

Washington has approved the shipment of the first batch of Abrams tanks to Kiev, US media reports, citing US Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Douglas Bush.

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🇳🇪🇺🇸 Ominous sign? Victoria Nuland visits Niger

Nuland met Niger’s military takeover leadership and had “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” talks for more than two hours. Her requests to meet with detained president Bazoum were denied, she added.

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🇺🇸 US whipping up tension around Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Russian ambassador to Washington says

💬 "If the Biden Administration is truly committed to ensuring peace in the region, then it must drop the accusations and threats of sanctions against Russia. As well as not try to disrupt the establishing ties between our country and Georgia. It is important to focus on practical activities within the framework of the International Geneva Discussions on Security and Stability in the South Caucasus. First of all, work towards concluding a legally binding agreement of Tbilisi with Sukhum and Tskhinval on the non-use of force,” Anatoly Antonov said.

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🇫🇷 🇷🇺 France unhappy with Niger's suspension of France 24 - but does Paris remember banning Sputnik?

While French diplomacy "strongly condemns the suspension of France 24 and RFI in Niger" following the military coup, Russian media Sputnik and RT remain banned from French soil since March 2022.

🗞 If Paris wants to show that it is committed to freedom of press, it could reconsider its decision, according to Manuel Marchal, the author of an article in the French newspaper Temoignages. Marchal went on to explain that the press freedom that France supposedly defends must not be "variable geometry"

👉 Read the full story!

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📹 Russian Ka-52 chopper targets Ukrainian armored vehicle in Krasny Liman direction

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📸 Stenin Contest 2023: Indian Photojournalist Work Wins Online Vote

🇮🇳 The spotlight is on Kabir Jhangiani, an exceptional talent hailing from India, as his breathtaking photograph "Seagulls around Yamuna River" takes first place in this year's Andrei Stenin Press Photo Contest.

🗯 Describing his work, Jhangiani eloquently shares: “A man rows his boat along the banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi. Migratory birds come to India for the winter. They get to different parts of the country by October and usually leave in March.”

🕊 Jhangiani's lens beautifully captures the harmony of man and nature during this enchanting migration period.

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