Naval forces of the Ansar Allah movement (the Houthis) have prevented the passage through the Gulf of Aden of all ships that have been heading to Israeli ports recently, the movement's leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said.

"Operations of Yemen's naval forces have resulted in a great victory - a complete halt to the passage of Israeli-affiliated ships to Israeli ports. During these weeks, not a single ship related to the Israeli enemy has been able to pass through the Gulf of Aden. It is a great victory and a real achievement, as well as proof of the effectiveness of Yemen's maritime operations," the leader said in a video message aired by the Al-Masirah broadcaster.

The Houthi movement vowed in November 2023 to attack any ships associated with Israel until it halts military actions in the Gaza Strip. This led US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to announce the creation of a multinational operation to secure navigation in the Red Sea.

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🇰🇵 North Korea fired several cruise missiles off its east coast toward the Sea of Japan, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, citing the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The JCS detected an unspecified number of missile launches around 9:00 a.m. local time (00:00 GMT) over waters northeast of the North Korean port city of Wonsan, the report said.

The report quoted the JSC as saying that the South's military "has been closely coordinating with the United States to monitor additional signs of North Korea's provocations" while "strengthening our monitoring and vigilance."

The missile firing marked the fifth cruise missile launch in 2024, the report said.

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Israel is likely to continue its actions in Gaza despite protests from the international community because it is “living in a parallel reality,” where it faces “no repercussions, the bombs keep being delivered, the guns keep being delivered, the aid keeps being [delivered],” journalist and editor of The Cradle Esteban Carillo told Sputnik’s Fault Lines.

“[US Secretary of State] Antony Blinken can travel to Israel, ten, 12, 15 times and he is going to get the same response every time, because everything you hear from the White House is completely toothless,” he said.

Carrillo noted that the IDF has been pushing Gazans further and further south, into a smaller area, and now there is nowhere left to flee.

Israel has said publicly that there are safe areas to flee to, Carrillo challenged them to show one. “I would like to see an Israeli official point to a place in Gaza that is safe for the Palestinians to move to, because there are none,” he asserted.

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“The US imposing [sanctions against Israeli settlers] is in lieu of what it is ought to really be doing, which is [stop] funding to Israel sufficiently so that it hurts and Israel stops raining genocide on Gaza,” Dr. Radhika Desai of the University of Manitoba, told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour, adding that Israel would have to halt its actions “if the US said, 'look, Mr. Netanyahu, either you comply with us, or your funding stops.’”

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on four Israeli settlers. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blasted the action, calling on Israeli banks to ignore the order. Nevertheless, the Bank of Israel announced that financial institutions in the country have to comply with the sanctions.

However, the US is taking more drastic action because, Desai says, Israel “is a critical part of the infrastructure of US dominance, and that infrastructure has already become so diminished that they can’t afford to lose Israel.”

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Elon Musk believes that passing a cognitive test should be mandatory for the president of the United States, who controls nuclear weapons.

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📹💥 A Russian Su-34 frontline bomber destroyed enemy positions in the Kupyansk region with guided bombs.

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Big Pharma docs: Ukraine became ‘guinea pig for any human tests by Western elites’ after 2014 coup

Patients of the Mariupol hospital's psychiatric ward were most likely used as susceptible "guinea pigs" in experiments that would not be possible in the countries where the various pharmaceutical companies are located, William Jones, a former White House correspondent for the Executive Intelligence Review and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, told Sputnik.

"It has generally been a practice to use some of the developing countries which don’t have such rigorous controls for these types of experiments," Jones recalled, in an apparent reference to Ukraine.

Following the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, the country "effectively became a ‘guinea pig’ for whatever experiments the forces of the Western elites had in store for them, as we see most dramatically in the way in which the ‘nation’ of Ukraine is being whittled down to nothing for the sake of NATO’S surrogate war against Russia," the expert noted.

Earlier, Sputnik obtained documents indicating that rheumatologic drugs had been tested on psychiatric patients of the Mariupol hospital for several years at the request of major Western pharmaceutical companies and with the assistance of Ukrainian officials.

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▪️Yemen's Houthis claim to have stopped ship traffic to the Israeli ports

▪️US Base in Syria's Omar oil field attacked three times within one hour

▪️What did House Speaker Johnson said about a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas?

▪️Watch: Russian Su-34 bomber destroys enemy positions with guided bombs

More stories:

▪️Israel is likely to continue its actions in Gaza because of ‘toothless’ US reaction

▪️Hunter Biden had pictures of cocaine in his phone, US prosecutors reveal

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❗️Russia receives note from Canada on refusal to extradite Ukrainian Nazi collaborator - Ambassador

Canada has refused to extradite Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Hunka, who received a standing ovation in the Canadian parliament in September, Russian Ambassador to Ottawa Oleg Stepanov confirmed to Sputnik.

The lack of an extradition treaty between Canada and Russia is an untenable excuse for refusing to extradite Hunka, the ambassador said.

"This is an obviously politically motivated excuse," Stepanov said.

He added that Global Affairs Canada has requested more time to prepare answers to the questions posed by Russia. The questions asked whether Canadian law enforcement agencies will investigate Hunka's past, his involvement in massacres and genocide under Canadian law; whether Canadian authorities will investigate the history of Hunka's status in Canada and how he obtained Canadian citizenship; and whether Hunka wrote that he was a member of the Nazi Waffen-SS unit on the application form when he arrived in Canada.

"In any case, the story of Nazi Hunka is far from over. We - Russia, the Foreign Ministry and the Embassy - will continue to seek justice," Stepanov said.

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💥🌪 Russian Uragan (Hurricane) MLRS crews attacked the rear positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kupyansk area.

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