🇺🇸 New documents released after a Freedom of Information Act request suggest the company LexusNexus has been selling personal location and facial recognition data to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since late last year. The information was revealed in a report in US media.

The data sold by the company also includes social media posts, IP addresses, employment history, and phone call records.

“This contract is mass surveillance in hyperdrive,” said Julie Mao, referring to the $15.9 million agreement signed by LexusNexus.

“It’s frightening that a rogue agency such as CBP has access to so many powerful technologies at the click of the button. Unfortunately, this is what LexisNexis appears now to be selling to thousands of police forces across the country. It’s now become a one-stop shop for accessing a range of invasive surveillance tools.”

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The United States is turning into a toxic player, and discredits itself as a reliable international partner by abusing its power as a chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) , Russia’s senior official at APEC, Ambassador Marat Berdyev, told Sputnik.

Berdyev shared that throughout the year, Russia and other APEC members were faced with unlawful actions to limit participation of their delegations as well as with non-issuance of visas, and harassment of Russian representatives, including various delays and increased attention from border authorities at the airport.

"For obvious reasons, these abuses were given a hard time, including public rebuff. In the long term, this practice boomerangs on the Americans themselves, who discredit themselves as a responsible international partner and turn into a 'toxic' player," Berdyev said.

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The effectiveness of Western sanctions is questionable, as Russia's foreign trade balance has risen to $75 billion

German-Finnish businessman Kim Dotcom compared the financial indicators of "the most indebted country in the world" Russia and the US by the end of 2023.

Bloomberg reports that Russia's total external balance is about $75 billion. NYT reports that the US federal deficit is nearly $2 trillion.

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📹 Russian Vasilyok mortar crews destroy Ukrainian stronghold

A 82-mm 2B9 Vasilyok wheeled mortar destroyed a stronghold and personnel of the enemy in Krasny Liman direction.

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❗️Biden signs US government funding bill that does not include additional aid to Israel and Ukraine

The US Navy has entered an official request to raise the number of whales that it is permitted to injure in accidents during Pacific training, US media reported.

The request followed collisions in the ocean with several whales in the sea off the Southern California coast in recent years, it said. At present, the allowable number of such actions is three through 2025; however, officials are looking to spike the incident counts to five.

“The Navy’s main response to hitting and killing whales is to ask for permission to harm more whales," Kristen Monsell, an lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, told media. "It’s nonsensical and extremely disappointing."

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🇷🇺 Russia's Borei-class nuclear-powered submarines are equipped with sonar systems that surpass US analogues in terms of sensitivity, according to Russian military experts Vitaly Bychkov and Vladimir Semiletov.

In an article for the magazine Arsenal Otechestva (Arsenal of the Motherland), the two explained that the systems can detect enemy ships at a distance 1.5 times greater than similar complexes on the fourth-generation US Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines.

Viktor Murakhovsky, the editor-in-chief of Arsenal Otechestva, previously told Sputnik that the sonar systems of the Borei-class submarines exceed those of US submarines by about 100 kilometers in terms of detection range.

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 Latest updates on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️IDF reports body of Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas found near Shifa hospital in Gaza Strip

▪️IDF reported taking control of the stronghold of the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement's northern command in the Gaza Strip.

▪️ "Israel's plans will fail and the Israeli hostages will be released according to the movement's conditions," said the politburo chief of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Ismail Haniyeh.

▪️The US opposes Israeli air strikes on hospitals in the Gaza Strip and is concerned about strikes on a Jordanian hospital, Matthew Miller, the director of the US State Department's press office, told a briefing.

▪️The Israeli military found an underground tunnel and a vehicle with weapons belonging to the Palestinian movement Hamas in the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip, the IDF reported.

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📹 Combat work of the Russian Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system carrying out an attack on Ukrainian military objects in the zone of the special military operation

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🇨🇳 Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said that the Asia-Pacific region should not become an arena for geopolitical rivalry and should not be drawn into a new cold war either.

He added that the APEC member countries have to "follow the right norms for state-to-state relations to maintain Asia-Pacific prosperity and stability through dialogue and partnership rather than confrontation and alliance."

The Chinese leader said that development could only be achieved with cooperation, and called on the countries in the region to "remain committed to open regionalism, and steadfastly advance the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific."

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❗️Hamas has stopped negotiations with Israel on the release of hostages, the Israeli ambassador to Moscow said

Foreign mercenaries from the Ukrainian Second International Legion are stationed in Slavyansk. They live in rented apartments, fearing Russian missile attacks, a captive Georgian mercenary told Sputnik.

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🇬🇧 UK media has revealed that Major-General Gwyn Jenkins, then a colonel in the Special Boat Service, received reports in 2011 indicating that Special Air Service (SAS) members were involved in extrajudicial killings of Taliban fighters. These reports described incidents where SAS troops targeted all males over 15 during night raids on Afghan villages.

Jenkins, after becoming aware of these serious allegations, informed his superior, General Jonathan Page. However, instead of taking immediate action, Jenkins stored the evidence in a classified dossier, securing it in a safe in April 2011. This critical information remained hidden for four years until a whistle-blower from the SAS brought it to the attention of the Royal Military Police.

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❗️Russian stormtroopers from the Ural Battalion took a prisoner dressed in the jacket of an American mercenary. As the new owner of the jacket later said, this is all that is left of the mercenary himself.

The video from social media

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📹 The crews of Russian warplanes carried out missile airstrikes on military targets and equipment of Ukrainian units in the direction of south Donetsk

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🚀 At the Russian Vostochny Cosmodrome, a model of the Angara-NZH heavy-class launch vehicle Angara-A5 was installed on the launch pad

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🇺🇸 The Pentagon failing its sixth audit in a row testifies to “how unruly and chaotic a bureaucratic department gets when it does nothing over the decades but grow,” Matthew Crosston, professor of national security and director of academic transformation at Bowie State University, told Sputnik.

He added that although the DoD repeatedly seeks to improve its financial system, “the size of the reform needed is beyond the scope and capability” of the Pentagon.

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🗣 The Image of The West is Destroyed

"The Americans have tried to delegitimize Iran, by creating misery and through media campaigns and propaganda. But what have they done in Gaza? They've destroyed their image in the eyes of that segment of the Iranian society that has been whether sympathetic to the West or pro-West or hoping to come to terms with the West," Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran professor, told Sputnik.

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

🎧 Listen to more of Marandi’s analysis in our podcast New Rules

📹 Russian fighters destroyed another Ukrainian armored vehicle near the settlement of Sporny in the DPR

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