🎥 SUP board rally along St. Petersburg’s canals? Easy!

More than 10,000 participants from 12 countries paddled through the center of St. Petersburg as part of an SUP festival. People came from Estonia, France, Bolivia, South Korea, Australia Egypt, and other countries. The 8 km route ran along the rivers and canals in the historic center of the city.

The river carnival is considered the largest SUP festival in the world.

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📊 Russia ranks among G20's lowest in national debt per capita

New data shows Russia has one of the lowest per-capita debt levels of the G20 group of nations.

◾️ India has the most modest sovereign debt, with the latest data from the G20 showing $1,316 per person. Indonesia follows with $1,747 and Russia is third with $2,076 per capita at the end of the first half of this year.

◾️ Other countries with national debts less than $5,000 per person include Turkiye ($2,800), China ($3,000) and South Africa ($4,500).

◾️ Countries with debts ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 include Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Argentina.

◾️ South Korea's national debt is almost twice that of Argentina, at $16,000 per capita, Germany's is $20,900 and Australia's is $21,200 per capita.

◾️ The six countries with above-average national debts are all members of the Group of Seven (G7).

◾️ Of those, Canada has the lowest debt at $25,300 per capita. France's debt stands at $40,300 per citizen, while the UK and Italy have accumulated debts twice as large as Canada’s at $51,600 and $51,900 per person. Japan has the second-largest national debt at $70,400 per capita.

◾️ The United States continues to have the highest sovereign debt, at $104,500 per capita — 80 times higher than India's and 50 times higher than Russia's. Among all countries in the world, only Singapore has a higher debt figure at $149,300 per person.

Check Sputnik's infographic to find out more:

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How US fuels Armenia’s self-destructive pro-Western shift

Washington has long aimed to shift Armenia, historically close to Russia, to serve Western interests in the South Caucasus.

🔸 After Russia's special military operation in Ukraine began in February 2022, US pressure on Armenia increased, especially following the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. US officials, including USAID chief Samantha Power and assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia Yuri Kim, soon visited Yerevan to provoke instability in Central Asia.

🔸 After the Russian-brokered deal ended the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in September 2023, the unrecognized republic dissolved with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claiming Russia's peacekeeping mission had "failed."

🔸 That same month, the Armenian Defense Ministry announced joint military exercises with the US dubbed "Eagle Partner 2023," which Moscow officials called "unfriendly." Pundits told Sputnik the drills were symbolic and unlikely to ensure peace and stability in Armenia.

🔸 Yerevan also signaled readiness for cooperation with NATO within the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP).

🔸 Armenia suspended its participation in the CSTO, canceled joint drills and boycotted summits. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Pashinyan, influenced by Soros Foundation, has consistently snubbed military events and summits with Russia.

🔸 On April 5, Pashinyan met in Brussels with the EU and US. The main outcome was a promise of €270 million from the EU and $65 million from the US.

🔸 Armenia is adopting NATO-standard artillery calibers with guns bought from India. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Yerevan in March 2024.

🔸 Like in Ukraine, the US has built new biolabs in Armenia or upgraded old ones, raising concerns in Russia. Funds were provided by the US Department of Defense and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency has access to the labs.

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Kamala Harris refused to hold a debate with Donald Trump on September 4 – Harris campaign

US Vice-President Kamala Harris' campaign rejects former president Donald Trump's challenge to a debate on Fox News on September 4, urging him to honor previous agreements for a clash on September 10, the campaign stated.

"He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10. The Vice President will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience," the campaign posted on X.

The campaign claimed that Trump announced the September 4 date because he was scared.

"We're happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to," the headquarters said, commenting on Trump's comments that there should be multiple rounds of head-to-heads.

Trump and Harris have been unable to agree on a date and channel for several weeks. The second round of debates was originally scheduled to take place on September 10 on ABC News, but that was oiginally planned as Trump’s second face-off with President Joe Biden, who has since quit from the presidential race after his disastrous first bout with the Republican candidate.

Trump said previous agreements were no longer relevant and accused ABC News of sympathizing with Democrats and spreading fake news.

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It is confirmed that the halt of oil transit from Russia through Ukraine was coordinated from the European Union – Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó

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Border defense or invasion springboard: Why is Poland massing troops on border with Belarus?

17,000 troops from Poland’s 18th Mechanized Division kicked off a large-scale operation on the border with Belarus on August 1, ostensibly to secure the frontier against what Warsaw characterized as a migrant-fueled “hybrid war” against Poland.

The operation, dubbed ‘Safe Podlasie’, is Poland’s latest push to beef up its eastern frontier. Poland has built a 186 km long, $400 mln fence along part of the border, and has plans for a 60 km+ long, 200-meter to 2 km-wide “buffer zone” with Belarus.

Operation ‘Safe Podlasie’ began alongside Operation Eastern Aurora, a NATO mission supposedly meant to secure Polish airspace.

Belarus has long been skeptical of Warsaw’s official rationale for military deployments near the border. Poland possesses the third-largest military in NATO, and has been eager to deploy alliance assets at every opportunity.

“We see how, across our western borders, airfields, naval bases and training grounds are being improved at an accelerated pace, forward bases are being created for the advance placement and storage of equipment, weapons and materiel,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at a forum in April.

“As for the combat units of the Polish Armed Forces on the border with Belarus, under the pretext of ‘strengthening security’, the military is solving reconnaissance and sabotage tasks,” Lukashenko said. “It’s clear that the territory of Poland and the Baltic countries is being purposefully turned into a military springboard for possible use by the NATO bloc.”

Poland has led a years-long effort to replace Lukashenko with a NATO and EU-friendly leader in a color revolution, seeing Belarus as key to its strategy of containing Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Lukashenko also accuses Warsaw of planning to seize western Belarus, referred to as the Polish borderlands by some Poles.

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⚡️ Israel's claimed right to provoke enemies with impunity 'does not work anymore' - analyst

⚡️ S&P downgrades Ukraine's credit rating as country defaults on bond payment

⚡️ Kamala Harris refused to hold a debate with Donald Trump on September 4 – Harris campaign

⚡️ How US fuels Armenia’s self-destructive pro-Western shift

⚡️ Russia ranks among G20's lowest in national debt per capita

⚡️UK government's failure to resolve migrant crisis fuels cycle of violence & crime

⚡️ Russian engineers create lightweight antenna for use aboard armored vehicles with cope cages

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Old video of Netanyahu urging US invasion of Iraq goes viral amid Israel-Iran tensions

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s September 2002 testimony to Congress, where he assured that there was “no question” about the threat of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction programs has resurfaced amid his government’s current efforts to drag the United States into a new regional war, this time with Iran.

“I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Netanyahu said in 2002 as the Bush administration built its case for war with Iraq.

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Why did Pentagon revoke 9/11 defendants' plea deal, called a 'slap in the face' by victims' families?

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a plea deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi, accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. The trio had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences instead of facing the death penalty at Guantanamo Bay.

The Pentagon chief also dismissed the officer leading the military commission that signed the plea deals on July 31.

Victims' groups were outraged by the original plea deals, calling the arrangement a ‘slap in the face’. Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice, said that none of the survivors or victims' families were consulted.

Amid the uproar the House Armed Services Committee announced an investigation into the Biden-Harris administration's involvement in the process, despite White House claims that the president had no role. Why were victims' families opposed to the deal?

⚡️ 23 years on, questions remain unanswered about who was behind the deadly attacks, with victims’ relatives rejecting the official version that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11.

⚡️ Families worried that the plea deal would delay the investigation and hide crucial information, preventing them from learning the full truth about the attacks, Eagleson argued.

⚡️ Refusing to believe the official FBI version, victims’ relatives have repeatedly appealed to the Justice Department and President Joe Biden to declassify documents about the attacks, which previous administrations withheld on the pretext of national security.

⚡️ Relatives sought more information about Saudi Arabia’s purported involvement after a redacted 2021 FBI report mentioned Saudi nationals. Riyadh has repeatedly denied the allegations.

⚡️ The use of torture in CIA prisons contaminated the evidence, rendering it potentially unusable in court, as a confession obtained through torture could be thrown out.

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