📊 In a recent poll of US voters conducted by NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ, more than half of the respondents expressed significant concerns about the cognitive health of President Joe Biden, who is presumed to be the Democratic Party's nominee for the 2024 presidential elections.

The poll primarily focused on the Republican Party's presidential primary race but included questions about President Biden's cognitive health. One question asked voters about their level of concern regarding Biden's cognitive health affecting his ability to effectively serve another presidential term.

The poll results showed that 52.21% of respondents were "very concerned" about Biden's cognitive health, while an additional 22.1% were "somewhat concerned." A smaller percentage, 12.51%, expressed being "a little concerned," and 13.19% stated that they did not care at all about Biden's cognitive health. These findings reflect widespread unease among voters regarding President Biden's cognitive capabilities.

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🇺🇸 US Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has remained intransigent in the face of growing calls for him to step down from office after being indicted on federal bribery charges.

“He will not resign,” US Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told reporters on Thursday, following a private lunch between Menendez and Senate Democrats. The New Jersey senator reportedly didn’t say if he intended to seek reelection in 2024.

“I think what we all really have to realize is [that] the rule of law is for all of us. No matter what you may think, no matter what I may think or any of us may think,” Manchin said. “He is going to vigorously defend himself.”

Several other Democratic lawmakers who spoke with US media after the meeting indicated they weren’t swayed by Menendez’s 15-minute speech about his situation, and suggested the majority of people in the room felt the same way.

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US President Joe Biden looks likely to face off against his predecessor Donald Trump for a second time in the 2024 presidential election. Despite the hostile rhetoric between the two figures, Marxist economics professor Richard Wolff argues that both are peddling the same economic policy.

Check out his full analysis

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🇰🇵 North Korea's female shooting team has won a gold medal in the women's 32-foot running target competition at the 19th Asian Games in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, the first top prize for North Korean athletes in major international competitions in the past five years, South Korean media reported on Thursday.

The North Korean shooters managed to put up 1,655 points on the board and beat Kazakhstan, media reported.

This is also the first gold medal for the North Korean shooters in the team event in this discipline. Their last medal came at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, where they won bronze, the news agency said.

North Korea has won a total of nine medals and is 13th on the medals table. China is first with 149 medals, South Korea is second with 74 medals and Japan is third with a total of 66 medals.

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NATO members are drawing dangerously close to direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict, a former US Marine told Sputnik, noting that when it came to the military bloc's stand-off approach to hostilities, "the ten foot pole is now two feet long."

"We saw this all throughout the US proxy war in Syria until they ended up invading Syria themselves, occupying the eastern part of the country east of the Euphrates River," independent journalist and former US Marine Brian Berletic said.

Read his full interview

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🇺🇳 Russia has circulated in the UN Security Council a draft statement by the Council's president calling for condemnation of last year's terrorist attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitriy Polyansky said on Telegram.

The draft statement, seen by Sputnik, says the UN Security Council condemns the terrorist act against the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines and calls for a thorough investigation into the attack.

It said the Security Council stressed that the attack was a direct threat to international peace and security and caused devastating consequences, such as environmental damage, long-term economic loss to a number of countries and danger to the Baltic Sea navigation.

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🇮🇷 The launch of Iran’s latest generation satellite into orbit is a “national success,” and an event proving the futility of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, President Ebrahim Raisi has said.

“The production and placing of the Iranian Nour-3 satellite into an orbit of 450 km from Earth, using the Iranian satellite carrier Qased, once again showed that threats and sanctions have no impact on the determination of our young scientists for the progress and excellence of Islamic Iran,” Raisi said in a congratulatory message.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched the third of its Noor (‘Light’) series satellites into orbit on Wednesday aboard a Qased (‘Messenger’) carrier rocket. The satellite will engage in intelligence collection, according to the IRGC.

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🇺🇸 Eighteen members of the Sunrise Movement were arrested at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office during a climate funding demonstration, the activist group said in a statement.

The Sunrise Movement mobilizes young individuals to combat climate change, prioritize eco-friendly job creation in the US, counteract the sway of fossil fuel industries in politics, and support leadership dedicated to the overall health and prosperity of the public, according to the group.

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🇨🇳🇯🇵 China's seafood imports from Japan decreased by 75.7% in August year-on-year after Beijing introduced a blanket ban on Japanese marine product imports in response to the Fukushima wastewater release, Japanese news agency Kodo reported, citing updated data from the Japanese Finance Ministry.

Imports in August totaled 2.18 billion yen ($14.6 million). Earlier in September, media reported a 67.6% drop in China's seafood imports from Japan last month, citing preliminary customs data.

China is the biggest importer of Japanese seafood, having shipped 87.1 billion yen worth of these products in 2022. In July, China slashed imports of Japanese marine products by a third.

The decline is attributed to China's ban on imports and processing of Japanese fish and seafood, slapped after Tokyo started releasing water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean despite Beijing's objections.

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❗️ A Ukrainian drone dropped 2 explosive devices on an electric substation in the Kursk region, 5 settlements and a hospital were de-energized, the governor said

🇺🇸 Over 4,000 volunteers have meticulously transcribed more than 28,000 logbook images from the US Navy fleet stationed in Hawaii during World War II, resulting in the recovery of a valuable dataset comprising 630,000 records. This dataset is expected to shed light on the validity of unusually warm temperature recordings during the war and contribute to a better understanding of long-term meteorological changes.

The research aims to address the "World War II warm anomaly" (WW2WA), a phenomenon characterized by high temperatures believed to be influenced by wartime practices, such as sailors documenting weather data during the day to avoid enemy vessels. Such practices are thought to have introduced biases in temperature recordings. Many of these historical records were either destroyed during the war or classified for a period, making them largely inaccessible to science.

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Radical representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Italy often try to put pressure and even threaten those heads of local structures who seek to develop cultural ties with Russia, Russian Ambassador to Rome Alexei Paramonov said in an interview with Sputnik.

According to Paramonov, all such cases are recorded by the Russian Embassy and the Italian side is informed about them. "However, until recently we have not seen any desire on the part of the Italian authorities, despite all assurances, to actually confront aggressive intentions," he pointed out.

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🇺🇸 The US House of Representatives has approved a bill to allocate $300m in military aid to Ukraine.

The allocations were previously included in the Pentagon's draft budget, but were removed to a separate document to simplify its adoption. The bill was supported by 311 congressmen and opposed by 117.

❗️ Russian air defense destroyed 11 Ukrainian UAVs overnight, including one over the territory of Kaluga region and 10 over Kursk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said

🇺🇸 Entrepreneur Elon Musk, while reporting from Texas’ border, said that immigration needs to be improved and the uncontrolled inflow of people should be disabled.

Musk visited Eagle Pass, a border crossing in Texas. Musk was accompanied by GOP Republican Tony Gonzales, who used the opportunity to explain details of their situation.

“We want to do both things: smooth out legal immigration and then stop the flow of people of such magnitude that is leading to a collapse of social services,” Musk told the audience during a livestream on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.

Even the US' largest city, New York City, is “buckling under pressure” of the vast number of immigrants who have illegally crossed into the US from the US-Mexico border, he said.

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🇷🇺🇮🇳 Settlements in national currencies between Russia and India have grown five-fold in monetary terms in 2023 year-on-year, while the average transaction amount in the first half of the year has increased by 83%, deputy chairman of Sberbank's executive board Anatoly Popov said.

"Sberbank is the key bank partner for the corporate clients who are working in national currencies with India. This year the volumes of settlements with India have grown five times in monetary terms compared to the same period last year," Popov told reporters on the sidelines of the SberVED 2023: India conference.

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🇷🇺📹 Russian peacekeeping contingent's military personnel delivered 12 tons of humanitarian cargo to Stepanakert for the civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh

▪️ The humanitarian aid included food, medicine and basic necessities.

▪️ In addition, along the route of the humanitarian convoy, Russian peacekeepers provided assistance to civilians leaving the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh independently. Military personnel of the Russian peacekeeping contingent provided drinking water, bread and baby food to anyone in need.

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📌 House Republicans held the first public hearing of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Thursday

Here are some key takeaways from Thursday's hearing:

▪️ GOP witnesses say there is still not enough evidence to impeach Biden;

▪️ GOP outlines questions they want answered;

▪️ Democrats attack investigation for a lack of evidence against the president;

▪️ The White House has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the investigation as politically motivated.

President Biden has been accused by Republicans, who have a narrow control of the House, of profiting from his son Hunter Biden's overseas business ventures during his tenure as vice president from 2009 to 2017.

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🧐 House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden seeking to obtain their personal and business records

According to copies of the subpoenas, the panel is giving Hunter and James Biden until October 12 to provide the requested documents or they may risk facing criminal contempt of Congress charges.

The Oversight Committee has disclosed since January that the Bidens and their associates established more than 20 shell companies, amassing more than $24 million from sources in China and other countries. The investigation also identified nine Biden family members linked to these business operations and affirmed the president interacted with the business affiliates on at least 24 occasions.

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🇷🇺🇦🇫 5th meeting of the Moscow Format on Afghanistan begins in the city of Kazan, Russia

The Moscow format was introduced in 2017 on the basis of the six-party mechanism for consultations between special representatives from Russia, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Iran and India.  

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🇷🇺 Russia's response is rooted in deterrence, not escalation, writes Vijainder K Thakur in his column for Sputnik India.

Instead of retaliation with indiscriminate missile strikes, Russia has focused on minimising Storm Shadow attacks through:

▪️ Improved the software of its Air Defense (AD) systems.

▪️ Deployment of Krasukha EW systems to thwart radar imaging of targets by US/NATO SAR equipped drones, aircraft and satellites.

▪️ The use of aerosol spray artillery shells to cloak potential targets from the optical seeker on Storm Shadow and analog missiles.

▪️ Mounting relentless counter air operations on Ukrainian air bases involved in missile attacks on Crimea.

👉 Read the full article on Sputnik India