❗️ Peru reinforces border security with police special forces amid an "internal armed conflict" in Ecuador, the Peruvian Interior Ministry said.

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The Peruvian Interior Ministry said Tuesday that police special forces are being deployed to the border with neighboring Ecuador after Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared a state of internal armed conflict in the country and ordered Ecuador's army to "neutralize" criminal groups operating in the country.

"Interior Minister Victor Torres Falcon has ordered that a contingent of the Directorate of Special Operations (Diroes) of national police be immediately deployed to the borderline with Ecuador to reinforce security measures," the ministry said on X (formerly Twitter).

La Republica newspaper reported earlier on Tuesday that Peruvian President Dina Boluarte had called an emergency meeting of the council of ministers to "take urgent measures to prevent thugs who escaped from [Ecuador's] prisons from entering Peru."

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🇺🇸🇮🇶 US won’t leave Iraq unless it’s squeezed out

“The US will drag its feet. The US will be reluctant to leave Iraq for many reasons. First, America is afraid of increased cooperation between Iraq and Iran. It sees its presence in Iraq as the best strategy of preventing such a future. Second, it uses its Iraqi presence to obstruct an unimpeded highway between Iran and Syria, which in turn is important to Israel,” Dr. Hossein Askari, a professor emeritus at George Washington University specializing in Middle Eastern affairs, told Sputnik.

💬 “Iraqi politicians have to be united and demand US withdrawal and much more publicly. The US must be embarrassed in the eyes of the world as an occupying power before it leaves,” Askari said.

Last week, Baghdad announced plans to speak to Washington about the removal of US troops after a US airstrike killed a senior Iraqi militia leader. A Pentagon spokesman told reporters Monday that he was “not aware of any plans” by the US to leave.

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🇪🇨 Fabricio Colon Pico, the leader of Ecuador's second-largest criminal gang, Los Lobos, has escaped from prison as a result of riots, the country's National Service for Comprehensive Assistance to Adult Persons Deprived of Liberty and Teenage Offenders of Ecuador (SNAI) said Tuesday.

"On the morning of January 9, clashes broke out between inmates, the national police and prison staff at Chimborazo Prison No. 1. Following the incident, Colon P., who was deprived of liberty and was in the prison, escaped from custody with other inmates," SNAI said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

SNAI also said that inmates of five Ecuadorian prisons in the provinces of Azuay, Canar, Napo, Tungurahua and Cotopaxi had taken 125 prison security personnel and 14 administrative staff hostage. SNAI added that security forces' operations at prisons in the provinces of Chimborazo and Napo have allowed the release of 11 hostages since the riots began.

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🇪🇺 Only 14% of Ukrainian refugees in Europe hope to return soon, surveys conducted by the UN refugee agency UNHCR have found

"The majority, of course, hope to return one day to Ukraine but just 14% of them plan to do so in the near future. That's because of the security concerns along with the access to the basic services, housing and livelihoods," UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told a news briefing of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva.

Europe is hosting some 5.9 million Ukrainians displaced by the nearly two-year conflict, 62% of them women and girls and 36% children. Another 2 million have fled to Russia.

"The majority of refugees plan to remain where they are but they will require continued support from the host governments and the international community to meet their basic needs and to access key services and build their self-reliance," Saltmarsh added.

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🗺️😵‍💫The world could see a lost decade of low economic growth if current trends continue, according to a report released by the World Bank on Tuesday.

“Global cooperation is critical to address the issues of high debt, climate change, trade fragmentation, and food insecurity and conflict,” read an overview on the World Bank’s website.

The report noted the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine as a threat to growth – coercive Western sanctions on Russia have increased energy prices worldwide, damaging European economies in particular. The report argued the end of 2024 is likely to conclude the slowest half-decade of economic growth in 30 years.

👉 Check the article for the full rundown

The Syrian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that eight servicepeople have been killed and another 13 people have been injured as a result of a terrorist attack on a bus south of the city of Palmyra in the Syrian governorate of Homs.

"Eight soldiers and one civilian were killed, another 13 people, including two civilians, were injured as a result of a terrorist attack with the use of an explosive device on a military bus in the Syrian Desert south of Palmyra today at noon," the ministry said in a statement.

A security source told Sputnik earlier on Tuesday that an explosion in a bus in the governorate of Homs has killed nine soldiers and injured another 22 troops.
The source added that the bomb had been planted by terrorists of the Daesh* terrorist group.

*Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organization banned in Russia and many other countries.

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🇷🇺 Russia Will Try to Decrease India-China Tensions, Valdai Expert Says

Strained ties between India and China due to the Ladakh border dispute pose a “significant problem” for Russia, which will try its best to “decrease tensions”, a Russian expert has told Sputnik India.

“Trilateral format as proposed many years ago by (Russian PM) Yevgeni Primakov doesn't work well under circumstances, but multilateral arrangements suit them better,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club.

🌐 Multilateral groups such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are better platforms for the three powers to pursue global issues of "overall interest," Lukyanov said.

“It (interactions in SCO and BRICS) is not a replacement for bilateral relations which need to be reinvented. But it helps in forging some cooperation,” the Valdai Club expert said.

🇨🇳🇮🇳 Sino-India tensions weren’t an “obstacle” in the three countries’ mutual objective of a “multipolar world order”, he said.

“We don’t know yet what exactly this [multipolar world] order means. This is a work in progress. But rivalry between poles is an imminent characteristic of such a system, so India-China relations cannot be an obstacle,” Lukyanov explained.

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🇫🇷👦🏻💩 “So you've heard of the phrase, I presume, of polishing a t**d?” asked political commentator Phil Kelly on Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Tuesday, using a scatalogical metaphor to describe new French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

“Within the Western political landscape, this is what we get… when something gets too stench-filled and the public know that they need a change, but they're not sure what the change should be.”

The activist described the 34-year-old politician as “an individual who was groomed by the establishment,” claiming he abandoned his former Socialist Party to seek “personal advancement” in President Emmanuel Macron’s movement.

Kelly said Attal is “anti-Muslim” and “anti-worker,” noting his criticism of strikes and pandering to Islamophobic sentiment in French society. He insisted right-wing politician Marine Le Pen is actually calling the shots in French politics, with others merely offering a milder version of her rhetoric.

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🇷🇺🇹🇷 Turkiye has remained the main importer of Russian grain and wheat in the first half of the 2023-2024 season, which starts on July 1, 2023, and ends on June 30, 2024, the Russian Union of Grain Exporters said.

"Turkiye has retained its position as the main importer of Russian grain and wheat in the first half of the 2023-2024 season," the union stated on Telegram, adding that Turkiye's imports of Russian grain in the said period amounted to 4.281 million tonnes, down 12.7% year-on-year, including a 2% decrease in wheat imports to 3.929 million tonnes.

Egypt ranked third in the list of grain importers, having reduced imports of Russian grain by 24.6% year-on-year to 2.956 million tonnes.

Iran was second on the list of the largest importers of Russian grain in the said period, having increased imports by 4.9% year-on-year to 3.902 million tonnes.

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📊🇩🇪 More than 40% of German nationals could imagine their participation in protests against policies of the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a poll conducted by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA) for German newspaper Bild showed.

The poll showed that 45% of respondents could imagine taking their discontent with the incumbent government to the streets, while some 40% of the polled people said they would not protest.

About 48% of supporters of the Free Democratic Party in the ruling coalition said that they might be ready to take to the streets in protests against the policies of their party as well. Supporters of Scholz's Social Democratic Party and the Alliance 90/The Greens coalition are more loyal to the government's policies: 66% and 69% of supporters of these parties have no intent of participating in protests.

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🇷🇺 A Russian paratrooper Kornet ATGM crew using a guided missile destroyed a Western-made armored combat vehicle in service with Ukrainian forces near Artemovsk, the Ministry of Defense said

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🇯🇵 Japan continues its militarization by building more and more US military bases

This time, construction of another new US military base in Okinawa will begin today and will take just over nine years, as stated by the Japanese government’s chief cabinet secretary.

In December, the Japanese authorities, without the consent of Okinawa Prefecture, approved the continuation of the construction of a US base in the area of the city of Nago in order to move the Futenma base there. Work on filling the seabed has already begun.

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