Famous French actor Alain Delon has died at the age of 88, according to French media

French media outlets have not yet given details about the death of the French cinema legend.

French theater and film actor, director, and screenwriter Alain Delon is best known for his roles in the films "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960), "In the Bright Sun" (1960), "Samurai" (1967), and "Two Men in Town" (1973).

Alain Delon received a Cesar Award for "Our Story" and an Honorary Award at the International Berlin Film Festival. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Delon was awarded an Honorary Palme d'Or for his contribution to cinema.

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Putin, China become chief US newsmakers

Vladimir Putin’s name cropped up in US media more than that of almost any other foreign leader in 2024, Sputnik has learned. The Russian president has been mentioned 16,300 times so far, outstripped only by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (19,900 times) amid his government’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

By comparison, Putin’s name was brought up only 6,000 times in 2020, yet the ongoing NATO proxy war in Ukraine has prompted US outlets to pounce on his name in a media frenzy.

The same survey shows that while Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name was cited 3,400 times in 2024, US media has been on a roll when it comes to mentioning America’s oft-demonized adversary – the People's Republic of China (PRC).

China was mentioned 245,000 times in the US media in January-July of this year, followed by Israel, which was mentioned 123,000 times, and then Russia, which cropped up 79,000 times. Ukraine was referenced 64,000 times throughout this US election year.

Generally, there is a trend for US media to flog the “China” narrative more than that of any other country every election cycle, with almost 400,000 mentions of China in 2020, and more than 210,000 in 2016.

Another go-to US adversary, Iran, was mentioned 36,000 times in 2024.

The survey used data ranging from US state media and official press releases to scientific outlets in cases where the search word (country or person) was mentioned at least three times.

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Russian troops eliminate a group of 16 Ukrainian military in the Kursk region

A group of 16 Ukrainian military personnel from a separate mechanized brigade has been destroyed near the village of Kremyanoe in Russia's Kursk region, a spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry told Sputnik on Sunday.

"A group of 16 soldiers from the 225th Separate Assault Battalion of the 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army was destroyed near the settlement of Kremyanoe in the Kursk region. The elimination of the group was confirmed by target control footage taken by a copter [UAV]. The enemy unit was destroyed by Russian troops in the forest," the spokesperson said.

The Kursk region, which borders Ukraine in western Russia, was attacked by about 1,000 Ukrainian troops and scores of armored vehicles on August 6. Russian forces responded by stopping Ukraine’s military from penetrating deep into Russian territory and continue to repel Ukrainian invasion attempts.

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Chinese Vice Premier to visit Russia on August 19-20

China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng will visit Russia on August 19-20 to take part in the 28th session of the Russian-Chinese Commission to prepare for regular meetings between the two countries' heads of government, Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong said on Sunday.

The Chinese vice premier will co-chair the meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko in Moscow, the spokesman said.

In December, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin co-chaired the 28th regular meeting between Chinese and Russian leaders in Beijing.

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Cynicism and left-wing populism: experts slam Kamala Harris’ economic program

The price ceiling for grocery stores proposed by US presidential candidate Kamala Harris will surely lead to shortages, the Wall Street Journal says in an editorial article noscriptd “Kamala Harris endorses Nixonomics.”

The authors accuse the US VP of having a poor understanding of how the economy works and dubbed her stance left-wing populism that has never worked out.

“If Ms. Harris really believes in this price-fixing, she lacks the most basic understanding of economics,” the article reads.

According to the outlet, Richard Nixon, the 37th POTUS, was the only other president who attempted to introduce a price ceiling, and the policy ended badly.

“He [Nixon] had to stage a humiliating retreat amid shortages and market dislocations, and prices immediately soared when controls were lifted,” they recalled.

Kamala Harris is not learning from her own mistakes, the article suggests. During her terms as second-in-charge after Joe Biden, inflation has soared, and as a result, Americans are struggling with high prices. Yet Kamala Harris believes the situation can be fixed with more cash injections into the US economy – a move that could cause prices to skyrocket, including the real estate market.

“The Biden-Harris inflation has made homes unaffordable for most young families, and her brainstorm for that is . . . more subsidies,” the article says.

However, the authors suggest Kamala Harris may have said what she did simply in order to buy public support – and if that is the case, “her cynicism is also telling.”

But if she plans to walk the walk apart from talking the talk, her intentions reveal “a candidate whose economic judgment is deeply flawed,” the article concludes.

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🇧🇾 Key statements by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in his interview with the TV channel Rossiya:

◻️ Ukraine formed powerful forces with the participation of Polish mercenaries to attack the Kursk region.

◻️ Ukraine's Kursk region escalation is an attempt to push Russia to take asymmetric actions, such as using nuclear weapons.

◻️ The Belarusian head of state is confident Russia will "wipe out" the Ukrainian military in the Kursk region.

◻️ Belarus and Russia can see where a strike by the West could be launched against the Union State. Minsk has strengthened its armed forces with powerful weapons.

◻️ Defensive plans on the country’s western border can be converted into offensive ones if necessary.

◻️ Belarus' Iskander missile systems are ready to fire nuclear warheads.

◻️ The Belarusian-Ukrainian border is mined “like never before.”

◻️ Ukrainian drones are constantly violating the southeastern border of Belarus.

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Russian Battlegroup Tsentr units have liberated the settlement of Sviridonovka in the Donetsk People's Republic, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said.

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Advance of Ukrainian troops into Russia's Kursk region stopped

The advance of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region has been stopped in the entire section where the Akhmat special forces operate, Major-General Apty Alaudinov, Akhmat commander and deputy head of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry, told journalists.

The Kursk region, which borders Ukraine in western Russia, was attacked by Ukrainian troops and scores of armored vehicles on August 6. Russian forces responded by stopping Ukraine’s military from penetrating deep into Russian territory and continue to repel Ukrainian invasion attempts.

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❗️The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lost up to 440 militants and two ammunition depots in the Russian Zapad Battlegroup's combat zone, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

🇷🇺🪖 More statements from the Russian Defense Ministry’s daily briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:

▪️Units from the Russian Vostok Battlegroup improved their forward positions, with the UAF losing up to 100 militants and a tank.

▪️The UAF lost 420 militants in the Russian Yug Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Russian air defense systems shot down seven HIMARS rockets, a Hammer guided bomb, and 27 Ukrainian drones, 11 of which were outside the special operation zone.

▪️The Russian Dnepr Battlegroup struck two Ukrainian brigades, resulting in the loss of up to 80 militants.

▪️The Russian Sever Battlegroup hit three enemy brigades, causing the UAF to lose up to 90 militants.

▪️The UAF lost over 500 militants, two armored vehicles, and several artillery units in the Russian Tsentr Battlegroup's combat zone.

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🇷🇺 Battlegroup Sever is identifying and destroying enemy sabotage groups south of the settlements of Alekseyevskoye, Safonovka, and Sheptukhovka in the Kursk region, the Russian Defense Ministry reports.

▪️ In addition, attacks by Ukrainian Armed Forces assault groups in the area of the settlements of Komarovka, Olgovka, Russkoye, and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye have been repelled. Ukrainian forces lost a tank and five armored combat vehicles, an engineering obstacle clearance vehicle, and more than 30 military personnel

▪️ Also, concentrations of enemy manpower and equipment were struck in the areas of the settlements of Borki, Fanaseyevka, Cherkasskaya Konopelka, Novoivanovka, Mikhaylovka, and Snagost.

▪️ Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 300 military personnel and 27 armored vehicles, including six tanks, and an MLRS launcher. In total, during the fighting in the Kursk region, the enemy has lost more than 3,460 servicemen and 50 tanks.

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Russia may use Ukraine’s Kursk attack to find ‘seams' in its defenses elsewhere – UK media

Ukraine’s attempt to seize territory in the Kursk region could help the Russian Armed Forces find weak spots in the enemy's defenses on other parts of the front, The Guardian speculated.

Prior to the attack on the Kursk region, the Kiev regime was already “suffering from a shortage of troops to rotate and hold the line” at the front, Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told the outlet. Citing the “grim picture of retreat’ served up by Ukraine’s Armed Forces ahead of the Kursk operation, the analyst noted that Kiev’s military has extremely limited capabilities to advance near Kursk ‘before it overextends.”

Soon the intensity of hostilities will decrease, as Russian forces “will dig defenses and then bring up artillery, electronic warfare complexes and fresh troops,” as it has enough personnel and equipment – unlike Ukraine, the UK think tank analyst said.

Speculating that any effect from the operation in the Kursk region that Ukraine is staking on is temporary and could turn out extremely badly for it, he summed up:

“The stretching of Ukrainian resources will increase opportunities for the Russians to find the seams in Ukraine’s defenses and make advances elsewhere [on the front].”

On August 6, Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region, which was slammed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a large-scale provocation. The Kiev regime planned the attack with the participation of the US and NATO, Russian presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev said.

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Pre-election magic? Illegal border crossings in US suddenly drop to four-year low

US Customs and Border Patrol’s migrant encounter figures along the border with Mexico have hit a four-year low.

“In July, the Border Patrol recorded 56,408 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border,” the agency said in a press release.

The CBP said its “operational statistics” for July “show a significant decline in migrant encounters during the first full month after a Presidential Proclamation issued June 4, 2024 by President Biden to temporarily suspend the entry of certain noncitizens across the southern border. US Border Patrol encounters in July were 32% lower than in June 2024 and were the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020.”

If the figures are to be believed, they are good news for Democrats fearing that the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the border crisis may cost the party the election in November. Biden effectively sparked the crisis in January 2021 after repealing a series of hardline, Trump-era immigration directives, prompting over 7.3 million illegal aliens to enter the United States. Donald Trump and his allies have dubbed the situation at the border a “disaster” and “invasion” that could “destroy our country.”

The Kamala Harris campaign has gone to great lengths in recent weeks to try to ditch the “border czar” moniker bestowed on her by the media in March 2021, when she was tapped to figure out the “root causes” of the immigration crisis. At the Republican National Convention last month, MAGA Republican Representative Matt Gaetz suggested that “appointing Kamala Harris to oversee the border is like appointing Bernie Madoff to oversee your retirement plan.”

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‘Akhmat’ special forces quash Ukraine’s advance in area of Kursk region: latest updates

◻️ The advance of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region has been stopped in the entire section where the Akhmat special forces operate, Major-General Apty Alaudinov, Akhmat commander and deputy head of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry, told journalists.

◻️ North Korea has denounced Ukraine’s aggression in Russia’s Kursk region as an “act of terrorism." "We strongly condemn the armed attack against the Russian territory by the Zelensky puppet regime under the control and support of the United States and the West as an unforgivable act of aggression and terror," a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry was cited by the KCNA news agency as saying.

◻️ More than 1,700 people have been evacuated in the past 24 hours from border areas of the Kursk region, the acting governor's spokeswoman, Irina Tolmacheva, said in a video published on the Kursk region government’s Telegram channel on Saturday.

◻️ During the fighting on the border of the Kursk region, Ukrainian forces have lost more than 3,460 servicemen, 50 tanks, 25 infantry fighting vehicles, 45 armored personnel carriers, 262 armored combat vehicles, 115 vehicles, five anti-aircraft missile systems, and seven multiple rocket launchers, including three HIMARS MLRS.

The Kursk region, which borders Ukraine in western Russia, was attacked by about 1,000 Ukrainian troops and scores of armored vehicles on August 6. Russian forces stopped Ukraine’s Army from advancing deep into Russian territory and continue to repel Ukrainian incursion attempts.

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Russia slams reports of disrupted Ukraine talks as "false"

Commenting on an article in the WP claiming that the attack by Ukrainian forces on the Kursk region disrupted negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry says no one disrupted anything, as there was nothing to disrupt

No direct or indirect negotiations either were or are being conducted between Russia and Ukraine on the security of civilian infrastructure facilities, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The threat to the security of the Zaporozhye and Kursk Nuclear Power Plants is created exclusively by the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the complicity of the United States and other Western countries, she said.

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US-Mexico row gathers steam as Latin American country pivots away from Washington’s grip

A diplomatic row is gaining steam between Mexico and the United States.

Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has accused the US of sponsoring opposition NGOs such as the group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) through USAID programs. Obrador said his Foreign Ministry had sent a diplomatic notice, while he would personally write to US President Joe Biden about it.

The US government has sent nearly $5 million to MCCI since 2018, with private donors including the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, Mexico’s Financial Crimes Unit (UIF) said.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has long courted controversy as a tool for using foreign aid to extend influence and support so-called “color revolutions,” such as in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014.

Reported US attempts to influence the outcome of the elections in Mexico through its NGOs appear to have failed. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum – to be sworn in on October 1 – has vowed to continue the policies of her predecessor.

The current row comes as part of a general pivot away from the US driven by Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO. The leader of the left-wing MORENA political party has repeatedly doubled down on assurances that he will not tolerate Mexico being subservient to the US.

◻️ Last year, Obrador rebuked “irresponsible” calls from some US lawmakers advocating military action against drug cartels. “We are not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory,” he said.

◻️ Mexico’s president refused to grant the Pentagon permission to track a stray Chinese balloon through Mexican airspace using American military aircraft and surveillance drones last year. The US shot down the balloon, claiming it was on a spying mission for Beijing, despite the latter insisting it was a civilian craft conducting scientific research.

◻️ Obrador accused the US Department of Defense of spying, and vowed to restrict military information after Mexico-related intelligence documents were leaked along with dozens of military files last year.

◻️ Obrador conditioned helping Biden with his southern border migrant crisis on lifting sanctions from Cuba and Venezuela – both of which are Mexican trading partners.

◻️ Mexico has sought to slash imports of genetically-modified US corn in favor of boosting local production, sparking a trade dispute.

◻️ Mexico joined other major Latin American countries in pushing back on efforts by the US and EU to diplomatically isolate President Nicolas Maduro after the Venezuelan president was reelected to a third term in office.

◻️ Mexico has refused to be drawn into supporting NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, and declined to impose economic sanctions on Russia.

◻️ Trade volume between Russia and Mexico increased by 9.8% in the first four months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, amounting to $759.99 million.

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💥 Merciless ‘Lancet’: Russian troops destroyed a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier in the border area of the Kursk region

A reconnaissance unit of the Sever battlegroup identified an armored personnel carrier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The target was hit by a ‘Lancet’ loitering munition.

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🇷🇺🇦🇿 Putin arrived in Azerbaijani capital, Baku, on a two-day state visit

The Russian president will hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. The two leaders will discuss the development of Russian-Azerbaijani relations and current international and regional issues.

This is Putin’s eighth visit to Azerbaijan. His last trip was in September 2018.

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