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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📹 Heavy rains led to flooding of the runway at India's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport

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US military continues to reinforce bases in Syria amid MidEast escalation

"US forces have reinforced their bases with 15 Apache helicopters to improve their ability to conduct attacks," the source said.

A US military plane landed at the Kharab Al-Jir base loaded with military equipment, air defense missiles, logistics equipment and various materials, carrying 25 servicepeople as well, the source added.

Earlier in the day, the US Department of Defense said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would oversee the deployment of additional forces to the Middle East to protect Israel, and that a final decision on the size of those forces has yet to be made.

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Seven countries in five years: Wikileaks recalls US 'defense' strategy after 9/11

In a region already ablaze with conflict, the Middle East faces fresh tensions following Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran and Iran's vows to retaliate. Amid the chaos, another drama is unfolding in the United States, where Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin has retracted a plea deal for alleged plotters of 9/11 after victims' families condemned it as a 'slap in the face.'

As threats escalate, WikiLeaks has dug up a chilling reminder of US Mideast strategy from former US Army General Wesley Clark. In the 2007 video, Clark recounts a conversation he had with a Pentagon official shortly after the 9/11 attacks, revealing a US master plan to target seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran. The revelation sheds light on the long-standing US military ambitions in the region, intertwining past strategies with today's unfolding crises.

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Although US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris cannot agree on a date and place for their future debates, let's imagine for a moment what we're going to witness either on September 4, 10 or whenever.

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US Central Command chief Gen. Michael Kurilla arrived in the Middle East on Saturday and is expected to visit the Gulf states, Jordan and Israel.

As US media claims, his aim is "to mobilize a coalition to protect Israel amid preparations for a possible Iranian attack."

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🎥 WATCH: Russian Su-25 attack aircraft carried out a strike with S-8 unguided rockets, destroying a stronghold and enemy manpower in Battlegroup Vostok’s area of responsibility.

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Trump congratulates Putin on another great deal,’ commenting on historic prisoner swap

Former US President Donald Trump called the historic prisoner swap between the US and Russia as a “great deal” negotiated by Vladimir Putin. The Republican presidential nominee, who has always taken pride in his own dealmaking skills, appeared to imply that Putin had outsmarted US officials regarding the terms of the swap.

“By the way, I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia on Saturday. “Did you see the deal we made? Now look, we want to get people in. We got 59 hostages — I never paid anything.”

Deriding the deal as inferior to those he made during his own presidency, Trump leveled a broadside at the Biden administration, saying:

“And we got our people back, but boy, we made some horrible, horrible deals.” Earlier, Trump called the swap a "win for Putin" on Fox News, saying:
“As usual, it was a win for Putin or any other country that deals with us.”

The historic swap took place on August 1 after the United States, Russia, Germany, and other Western countries struck a deal for a 24-person prisoner swap, one of the largest prisoner exchange agreements since the end of the Cold War. As a result, eight Russians detained and held in custody in a number of NATO countries returned home. Russia, in turn, released 16 people, including seven Russian and five German citizens.

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Elon Musk speculates that civil war is ‘inevitable’ in violence-gripped UK

US billionaire Elon Musk has speculated that the UK is heading for civil war. Musk weighed in on the wave of violence sweeping across the country amid uncontrolled migration and soaring crime, posting on X a succinct post that read, “Civil war is inevitable.”

The Tesla CEO and owner of X made the comment under one of many videos showing scenes of unrest gripping towns and cities in Britain during the past days. The latest wave of interethnic violence was triggered by a recent tragedy in the town of Southport, where a 17-year-old teen of Rwandan origin stabbed three girls to death on July 29. Police arrested dozens of people on Saturday, as projectiles and fireworks were set off, and storefronts set on fire. Footage posted on social media shows crowds chanting anti-immigrant slogans such as “stop the boats” in Liverpool, in a reference to the dinghies used by asylum seekers to cross the English Channel to the UK. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel denounced Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party for complacency amid the riots, writing on X that Parliament ought to be recalled from summer break.

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◾️ Trump congratulates Vladimir Putin on ‘another great deal’

◾️ Lebanon fires missiles towards Israel, intercepting most of them

◾️ US Central Command chief arrives in the Middle East, likely aims to bolster Israeli allies’ cohesion

◾️ United States reinforces its military presence in Syria

◾️ Elon Musk forecasts civil war in UK

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