❗️ Trump to be included as a candidate in the Colorado 2024 ballot till the Supreme Court decides on appeal by the state's Republican party.

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

▪️The death toll from Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip has risen to 21,320, with the number of injured reaching 55,603 people, the Hamas-controlled enclave's health ministry said.

▪️Judith Weinstein, 70, an American hostage who was believed to be held by Hamas, was killed during the October 7 attack on Israel, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said.

▪️The Israeli ambassador will not return to Ankara while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains in power in the country, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said.

▪️The French authorities have banned a rally in support of Palestine scheduled to be held in the city of Nice on December 30, French media reported.

▪️The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported another shelling near the Al-Amal hospital in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, which left 10 people dead and 12 injured.

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🇻🇪🇬🇧 President Nicolas Maduro ordered on Thursday the armed forces to launch "the activation of a joint defensive action" in response to the deployment of a British warship off the coast of Guyana.

"I have ordered the activation of a joint defensive action of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces" off the coast of Essequibo, he said in a state televised broadcast, but did not provide more information.

Earlier this month, the British media reported, citing a British defense ministry spokesman, that the United Kingdom would deploy a patrol ship off Guyana's coast as a sign of support for the state in the territorial dispute over Essequibo. The head of Venezuela's defense ministry, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, called it a provocation.

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Former US President Donald Trump will appear on the Republican Party primary election ballot in the state of Colorado unless a higher court takes action otherwise, following an appeal by the state’s Republican Party branch, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office stated on Thursday.

"The Colorado Republican Party has appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson v. Griswold to the US Supreme Court. With the appeal filed, Donald Trump will be included as a candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot when certification occurs on January 5, 2024, unless the US Supreme Court declines to take the case or otherwise affirms the Colorado Supreme Court ruling," Griswold’s office said.

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❗️ The Syrian air defense system is repelling an attack near Damascus, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported on Thursday.

Explosions are also heard near Syria's capital, according to the broadcaster.

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🇸🇾🇮🇱 The Syrian Defense Ministry said late Thursday that Israel has struck several positions in southern Syria, but the country's air defenses intercepted most of the missiles launched.

"Today [on Thursday], around 11:05 p.m. [local time, 20:05 GMT], the Israeli enemy has carried out an air aggression from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, having struck some positions in the southern region [of Syria]. Our air defense systems have responded to the aggressor's missiles and shot down most of them," the defense ministry said in a statement.

The attack has resulted in material damage, the ministry added.

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The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) was shelled by Ukrainian troops 69 times over the past day, the DPR representative office in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) of issues related to Ukraine's war crimes said in a statement.

"Over the past 24 hours, the office reported 69 cases of fire by Ukrainian armed forces," the office wrote on Telegram.

According to the statement, three civilians were wounded. The DPR stated that the Kiev regime fired 235 rounds of various ammunition.

In the previous day, Ukrainian troops launched 54 strikes .

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🇮🇱 Israel actually ‘conducting ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza – analysts

The West’s condemnation of Russia demilitarizing Ukraine while supporting Israel’s ongoing Gaza incursion is a glaring example of double standards Mateusz Piskorski, a Myśl Polska columnist, told Sputnik. According to him, it is now apparent that the Israeli authorities are engaged in ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, in contrast, that is not being done in the zone of the Russian special military operation.

Comparatively, Paolo Raffone, a Brussels-based strategist, noted that Russia's military operation is more limited than Israel's Gaza offensive.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with Sputnik highlighted that Israel's final goal of eliminating Hamas looks like the Russian special operation’s aim of demilitarizing Ukraine, expressing surprise at Israel's negative reaction to Moscow's actions.

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🗣️“Some were stripped naked, blindfolded and restrained for long hours with handcuffs and with their legs tied, while Israeli soldiers stepped on their heads and backs, were spat at, slammed against walls, threatened, insulted, humiliated and in some cases subjected to sexual and gender-based violence.”

A Thursday report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed Israel’s brutal treatment of detainees in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Thousands have been arrested there amidst the documented use of military tactics by Israel that have led to hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries.

Although Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip - where at least 21,320 people have been killed, has seen greater attention, the UN also stresses “unlawful killings” and a “rapidly deteriorating human rights situation” in the West Bank.

Israel’s foreign minister recently announced the country would deny visas to UN staff in retaliation for their criticism.

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🇮🇷🇷🇺 Iran and Russia will sign a deal to trade in their national currencies instead of the US dollar in the first quarter of 2024, Iranian Central Bank governor Mohammad Reza Farzin stated on Thursday.

"Our exports to Russia are lower than imports... Our effective measures [to change the situation] include the signing of a currency agreement between Iran and Russia in the first quarter of the next year," Farzin was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

Earlier this week, Farzin visited Moscow, where he held a meeting with Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. The bank heads agreed to open a credit line worth 6.5 billion rubles ($73.45 million), so that Iran could import necessary Russian goods.

On Wednesday, the Tasnim news agency reported, citing the Central Bank of Iran, that the country's Bank Sepah opened the first foreign letter of credit for importing Russian goods after the US Justice Department had reinstated the sanction regime against the republic.

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian movement Hamas, said on Thursday that its fighters had destroyed over 825 units of Israeli military equipment since the start of the latter's ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

"The number of equipment units hit by our fighters since the beginning of the ground aggression exceeded 825. Those include armored personnel carriers, tanks, bulldozers, military vehicles and trucks," Al Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida stated in a video message broadcast by Al Jazeera.

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🔍 As long as Team Biden rules the US no honest audit of Ukraine spending will occur

"I have seen no reports of significance from past audit teams or these most recent efforts," retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. "The effective, more honest, audit will only occur after the Biden administration is displaced, whether at the end of 2024 or some later date if Biden gains re-election."

Having approved $75.4 billion in funding for the Kiev regime, Washington has been able to trace only $1.5 billion, blaming the lack of transparency on military conditions and endemic corruption, as per an RT analysis of newly declassified US government materials. Per RT's estimates, 98% of US funding to Ukraine remains untraceable.

Presently, "'audits and audit teams in Ukraine are simply window dressing, designed to make Congress feel better about pouring more badly needed cash into the black hole of the Zelensky regime," Kwiatkowski stressed.

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Cause du Jour to Yesterday's News: Western Media’s Evolving Coverage of Ukraine

2023 was the year that Americans’ dissent over the arming of Ukraine went from a minority position to a growing bipartisan consensus.

After the broad failure of Kiev’s vaunted counteroffensive, opposition to the continued sending of billions in military aid became impossible to ignore.

Now the conflict in Gaza threatens to sideline discussion of Ukraine entirely as consent is manufactured for another proxy war.

👉 Follow the link for a deep dive into how media reporting on the Ukraine conflict serves as a case study of mainstream journalism’s propaganda function on behalf of Western militarism.

🇸🇾🇮🇱 On Friday, the Syrian air defense systems repelled another Israeli attack on Damascus outskirts, according to the Syrian Defense Ministry.

"Today [on Friday], around 1:20 a.m. [local time, 22:20 GMT], the Israeli enemy has carried out an air aggression from the direction of Lebanon, having struck some positions in the vicinity of Damascus. Our air defense systems have responded to the aggressor's missiles and shot down several missiles," the ministry stated, adding that the attack resulted in material damage.

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⚡️Maine Secretary of State says Trump's candidate form invalid, he won’t be in March 2024 ballot.

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Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows disqualified former President Donald Trump from the state's Republican primary ballot because of his role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol in 2021.

"They [challengers] have provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate the falsity of Mr. Trump's declaration that he meets the qualifications of the office of the presidency," Bellows wrote in a document on Thursday. "Therefore, as required by [law], I find that the primary petition of Mr. Trump is invalid."

However, Bellows added that the effect of the decision will be suspended until the Superior Court rules on any forthcoming appeal from the Trump defense team.

The appeal will be filed immediately, a Trump campaign spokesman said in a press release.

"We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect, and President Trump will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again," the spokesman said on Thursday.

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“Decade after decade of bad policy is finally catching up with the US,” journalist Daniel Lazare told Sputnik in a discussion about immigration and drug policy.

The conversation comes amidst a surge of migrants at the US’ southern border, with President Joe Biden seeking a solution in time for his expected reelection campaign.

The crisis prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visit Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City recently. López Obrador is a harsh critic of US foreign policy and interference in Latin America.

The US backed political subversion, coups, and death squads in the region for decades throughout the Cold War, leading to violence and poverty that’s exacerbated by the West’s imposition of neoliberal economic policy on the region.

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Ukraine's PM is panicking over wrecked economy, begging for aid, according to a media report.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal has reportedly requested an emergency meeting to be held in January with Kiev's donors due to "exceptionally high uncertainty" over the country's budget.

The development was reported by US media, citing the politician's letter sent this month to the multi-agency Donor Coordination Panel.

“To uphold macroeconomic stability, it is imperative that we receive sufficient, prompt, and predictable external financing, beginning January 2024," the official reportedly emphasized. "It is hardly possible to hold any discussion about recovery and rebuilding projects, when we struggle fulfilling the 2024 survival priorities."

According to the report, the Kiev regime is unable to fulfill social obligations without urgent foreign financial support.

“We cannot wait till March to finance our social needs,” Shmyhal stressed.

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that US President Joe Biden's administration is displaying hostility to the rule of law in the United States after threatening to sue the state over a newly-imposed law designed to address the crisis on the southern border with Mexico.

"The Biden administration not only refuses to enforce current US immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration," Abbott said on Thursday. "I’ve never seen such hostility to the rule of law in America."

The governor also stressed that Biden is destroying the United States while Texas is trying to save it.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last week aiming to block this state law, known as SB4.

The US southern border has turned into a crisis that has seen three consecutive record-breaking years of illegal crossings since Biden came into office and relaxed immigration policies, which has summed up to more than 5.4 million to date.

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Hamas published a footage of its military wing engaging IDF armored vehicles in Gaza.

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Analyst Daniel Lazare sees peace and neutrality in Ukraine’s future if the United States is willing to allow it.

Lazare discussed the issue on Sputnik’s Political Misfits program, claiming Republicans’ opposition to further US funding for Ukraine could mark the “beginning of the end” of the conflict in the Donbass.

The investigative journalist blamed the United States for the outbreak of hostilities, saying their push against compromise with the Donbass people tore the country in two and made “outright war more or less inevitable.”

“And now the US is facing the consequences. Or rather Zelensky is facing the consequences while the US kind of walks away,” the analyst stressed.

Lazare proposed a “Finlandization” model for Ukraine, referring to Finland’s foreign policy during the Cold War that saw the country adopt a neutral stance towards the Soviet Union.

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