🚨EXCLUSIVE: Full blown riots in Sydney following Bishop Mari Mari Emanuel stabbing

Local authorities have deployed hundreds of riot police, armored vehicles, and helicopters in a bid to disperse the angry crowd.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Israel has postponed plans to launch an operation in Rafah in Gaza amid an Iranian attack, CNN reports, citing Israeli sources

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇨🇳 China makes splash with new AI-powered water cannon

🌊 China has developed a new maritime technology that could reshape the future of non-lethal warfare. What is the new AI-powered water cannon capable of?

◾️ It uses AI for real-time identification of targets and is capable of striking with a pressure of 1.2 megapascals at targets over 100 meters away.

◾️ It maintains remarkable precision even in adverse sea conditions, with an error margin of only 2 meters.

◾️ It uses motion sensors to collect info and adjusts its ballistics in power and trajectory accordingly.

◾️ It could boost China’s presence in the South China Sea and assert its maritime claims without the use of lethal force.

◾️ It could pave the way for intelligence strategies in place of brute force, and change the power dynamics of global conflicts.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💥‘We don’t care about you’: Scott Ritter slams Ukraine’s delusional ennoscriptment mentality

Following Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel, Ukrainian politicians once again issued demands for the West to send them more air defense systems. Keep dreaming, says Scott Ritter.

“Let me make this very clear to the Ukrainian crowd: We don't want you to win. We don't care about you. We give you just enough to keep you going, and then we stand by and watch you bury your dead. You don't matter to us. You're not Israel.”

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Which militant groups and armies have hit Israel since October 2023?

On Saturday night, the Iranian IRGC launched an unprecedented attack on Israeli territory. What other military groups have attacked Israel since the war in Gaza started?

▪️The IRGC. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is an elite component of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For the first time in history it attacked Israeli territory with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles on the night of April 13. The entire territory of Israel was under air raid alert. According to Iranian officials, the barrage was in response to the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

▪️Ansar Allah. The Yemeni movement, known as the Houthis, have attacked the southern Israeli port of Eilat several times with drones since November 2023. At the same time, Ansar Allah is blockading commercial shipping ships heading to and from Eilat through the Red Sea. This has caused significant economic damage to Israel and its allies.

▪️Hezbollah. Based in southern Lebanon, the movement has been actively involved in hostilities against Israel since October 2023. Hezbollah has lanched rocket and artillery strikes into the northern areas of Israel. On the night of the Iranian operation, the IRGC was also supported by the movement's missile strikes on Israeli Galilee region.

▪️Kataib Hezbollah and Hashd al-Shaabi. Both these Iraqi military groups are part of the 'Axis of Resistance'. Since October 2023, the two groups have regularly launched drones towards southern regions of Israel. They also supported Iran's attack on Israel at the weekend.

▪️Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). On October 7, the two Palestinian militant groups attacked Israeli territories near the Gaza Strip, killing about a thousand people and taking 253 prisoners. This was the beginning of the current clashes in Gaza.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US hard-pressed to react as Iran gets ‘complete map of Israeli defense capabilities’

“The US is always in complicated situations, and most of the time they can only blame themselves,” Dr. Marco Carnelos, a veteran Italian diplomat and former advisor on Middle East policy to Prime Ministers Prodi and Belusconi, told Sputnik, commenting on the strategic bind Washington has found itself in the wake of Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend.

“The Biden administration will continue to attempt a quite difficult balancing act between the necessity to avoid an escalation and its ‘ironclad commitment’ to Israel’s security, which in some cases is a contradiction in terms,” the diplomat explained.

Ultimately, “the ball is now in the Israeli court” as far as the response to Iran’s strikes is concerned, Carnelos believes. “Iran has no further steps to contemplate, it can wait and see, although it could prepare its contingency plans,” he said, pointing out that the weekend’s attack gave Tehran “a complete map of Israeli defense capabilities.”

That means next time, if Israel responds with force, “another attack [by Iran] could not be largely preannounced as it has been this time, and above all…could be carried out with far more lethal and accurate modalities,” Carnelos warned.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Sputnik contributor Russell Bentley, who went missing in Donetsk exactly one week ago, has dedicated himself to breaking down the information barrier between the Donbass and the West, his wife Lyudmila Bentley, told Sputnik.

“Russell calls himself not just a correspondent, but also an information warrior. His word is his weapon. He always says that while an assault rifle can fire only a certain amount of meters, words can travel across the world, and these words can help people see the truth.”

Russell Bentley has always sought to defend his values and beliefs through concrete actions, Lyudmila explained. In 2014, he gave up his life in America to travel to the Donbass and enlist in the fledgling Donetsk People’s Militia because he couldn’t stand idly by and watch the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military. Even after retiring from the militia, Russell continued to organize humanitarian aid efforts and push back against Western disinformation.

“Since coming here ten years ago, he has fully committed himself to helping the ordinary people of the Donbass. And if he is helping to defend the ordinary people of Donbass, then he is helping to defend all of Russia.”

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📉 Economic woes push Germany to pivot to China

Despite vows to “de-risk” China, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting China with a delegation of business honchos from top German firms. What could be the key motivation for his visit?

🔺China is the fourth-largest export market for Germany and the latter’s direct investment in China hit a record high of $12.7 billion in 2023. Big talks on “de-risk” aside, Germany knows that economic cooperation with its largest global trading partner is imperative.

🔺Germany is reeling from a value creation loss of $171 billion due to the Ukraine conflict, according to the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.

🔺Germany’s sanctions on Russia have drastically shrunk its industrial base due to high energy costs.

🔺Germany’s economy is in apparent recession. Two out of three German companies are relocating overseas to save money, with Asia (including China) as a key destination.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔺Israel is currently considering a symbolic strike as a priority option for responding to the Iranian attack, which would "send a message" but not cause casualties

🔺‘We don’t care about you’: Scott Ritter slams Ukraine’s delusional ennoscriptment mentality

🔺EXCLUSIVE: Full blown riots in Sydney following Bishop Mari Mari Emanuel stabbing

🔺US hard-pressed to react as Iran gets ‘complete map of Israeli defense capabilities’

🔺Economic woes push Germany to pivot to China

🔺Which militant groups and armies have hit Israel since October 2023?

🔺China makes splash with new AI-powered water cannon

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Cameron wins the hypocrisy contest, blaming Iran for retaliation strikes on Israel

The British foreign secretary David Cameron, who served as the UK’s prime minister from 2010 to 2016, continues to set records in hypocrisy. Pressed by the reporters to clarify his position on the conflict between Iran and Israel in the context of his hawkish stance on Ukraine, Cameron simply refused to face facts which did not fit his agenda.

Pressed on Monday on LBC radio to assess the deadly Israeli strike on April 1 against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Cameron said: “It is a matter for Israel. We have not made a comment on it. Can I understand Israel’s frustration with Iran? Yes. Absolutely I can. I am not getting into what Israel has or has not done.”

Russia’s envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia on the same day blasted the UK and the US for hypocrisy, putting part of the blame for Iran’s attack on the failure of the UN Security Council to condemn by a consensus Israel’s strike.

“If a Western diplomatic representation had been hit, you [the US, the UK and France] would have immediately rained down reprisals,” Nebenzia said. “And you would have argued in this very chamber that you had the right to do it.”

A few days ago, Cameron refused to condemn Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian territory, even though the US officially urged Zelensky’s regime not to hit the internationally-recognized Russian territory and spare oil facilities. But Cameron defended “Ukraine’s right to hit Russian energy targets.”

While British jet fighters actively participated in the defense of Israel’s territory and Cameron called for “peace” there, for Ukraine he only had military solutions — more war, but without any risk for NATO troops. He said Ukrainians needed not Western pilots, but “more anti-aircraft systems to be given by us.”

Subscribe to @SputnikInt