🇹🇷The mayor of Turkiye's Ankara won the World Innovation Award in category
'Affordable and Clean Energy' at the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow.

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🇮🇳Deputy Chief Minister of India's Karntaka won the World Innovation Award in category 'Decent Work and Economic Growth' at the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow.

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US Senator Mark Warner thanks Meta* for deleting Russian media accounts

"I want to thank Meta, and I hope our committee's interest in this subject helped move you yesterday when you guys decided to take down RT and related Russian influence operations. I want to thank Microsoft for being forward leaning and publicly sharing information on, again, some of the Russian activities," he said at the US Senate Hearing With Top Tech Executives on Foreign Threats To Elections 2024.

*banned in Russia for extremism

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🇮🇷The mayor of Iran's capital Tehran received the World Innovation Award in category 'Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure' at the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow.

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Meta* removes over 200 groups linked to Russia, China, and Iran, Nick Clegg says

"In fact, we have removed over 200 such networks since 2017, including networks from Russia, Iran, and China. We remain committed to stopping these threats, and we are constantly improving and evolving our defenses to stay ahead of our adversaries," President for Global Affairs at Meta, during the US Senate hearing with top tech executives on foreign threats to the 2024 elections.

*banned in Russia for extremism

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Warner unveils the ‘foreign adversary club’: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea make the cut

Speaking at the US Senate hearing with top tech executives on foreign threats to the 2024 elections US Senator Mark Warner identified China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as "hostile states" towards the United States.

"We are not cherry picking these adversaries. These are nation states that are in the law of our country - China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, others - have been designated as foreign adversaries," he said.

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🇦🇿The World Innovation Award in category 'Reduced Inequaities' at the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow went to the mayor Baku, Azerbaijan's capital.

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Meta* outsources truth: Clegg boasts largest fact-checking network at Senate Hearing

During the US Senate hearing with top tech executives on foreign threats to the 2024 elections, Nick Clegg, Meta’s President for Global Affairs, touted the platform’s robust approach to fact-checking.

"We have built the largest independent fact-checking network of any platform," he proudly declared, noting their nearly 100 partners who review viral misinformation in more than 60 languages. In case there was any doubt, Clegg emphasized that Meta doesn’t directly employ these fact-checkers, who are "independently vetted by a third-party organization."

*banned in Russia for extremism

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🇷🇺Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin won the World Innovation Award in category 'Sustainable Cities and Communities' at the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum.

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Forward Observations Group: Who are the American wild geese biting the dust in Russia's Kursk region?

The Russian military defeated several Ukrainian Armed Forces brigades, including US mercenaries of the Forward Observations Group's detachment, a commander of the Akhmat special forces unit with call sign "Aid", told Sputnik.

What is known about Forward Observations Group's (FOG) Ukraine activities?

▫️Western media sources and Wikipedia describe FOG not as a private military company (PMC), but "a military lifestyle brand."

▫️The group's founder Derrick Bales, an African-American and former US infantryman, was spotted cozying up with fighters of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion* and the ultra-nationalist Right Sector** as Vice News reported in May 2021.

▫️As per Vice, one video, posted by FOG's founder on YouTube, showed him approaching Donetsk airport. The video is no longer available.

▫️A FOG Instagram** post featured Bales and other men with rifles and black squares obstructing their faces. The caption read: "up to some sh**t in Ukraine." FOG's first account was taken down after publishing Ukrainian photos, as per Vice.

▫️ Judging from FOG's second account that has over 260K followers, the group continued its activities in Ukraine after the beginning of the special military operation. Pictures taken in the conflict zone suggest FOG fighters have taken part in hostilities.

▫️In August, the US private military company published a photo of three soldiers posing in front of an HMMWV armored vehicle. The geolocation indicates the photo was taken in the Kursk region.

▫️The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced FOG's presence in the Kursk region as "direct [US] involvement" in the conflict in Ukraine.

*banned for terrorism in Russia
**banned for extremism in Russia

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Harris' way of answering questions: chatter, not remembering what the original question was about

"Ohio," "Project 2025," "LGBTQ*," "immigrants" What was she getting at?

*banned in Russia for extremism

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📹🦔While filming a report in the Czech Republic, the operator of the ČTK press service accidentally noticed a hedgehog stuck in a fence and rescued it.

Currently, the Czech Republic, like many European countries, is suffering from flooding.

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The US Senate Intelligence Committee called tech leaders to testify about “foreign threats to elections in 2024.”

Here's everything you need to know (Part 1/Part 2/Part З):

👉The Good

A few Republican senators spoke out against censorship of dissenting voices, albeit without pushing back on the idea that freedom of speech belongs exclusively to Americans.

Cmte. Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-FL) brought up the Hunter Biden laptop story as evidence of when government and tech censorship can go wrong.

“There was a concerted effort… to silence a media outlet in the United States for something that turned out not to be Russian disinformation,” the Senator lamented, also bringing up the censorship of the COVID lab leak origin theory.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AZ) echoed those statements and noted that it was far more influential than anything Russia, China or Iran had been accused of.

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What Happened During US Senate Intel Hearing on Election Threats? (Part 1/Part 2/Part З):

👉 The Bad

Anti-Russian, Chinese and Iranian sentiments were high in the hearing, as was the desire to quiet speech from anyone originating from those countries.

Cmte. Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) complained that Meta* and Google have allegedly allowed their ad tools to be used by sanctioned entities (read: companies in China, Russia and Iran). He also slammed Elon Musk for not cooperating with their efforts to fight “disinformation.”

“I think it’s a real shame that in the previous investigations, Twitter was a very collaborative entity. Under X they are absent and some of the most egregious activity is taking place,” Warner said, later thanking the Meta* president of global affairs for the axing of Russian sites (see: Sputnik and RT) from the platform.

*banned in Russia as an extremist organization

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Breaking down the US Senate hearing on election threats (Part 1/Part 2/Part З):

👉 The Funny

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) accused China of using the Sister Cities program to sow discord.

“China is attempting to build relations with state and local officials. We see the sister cities programs, we see the Confucius Institutes and educational institutions, so how are your platforms trying to help safeguard the down-ballot races?” she asked.

The Sister Cities program was created in 1956 by US President Dwight Eisenhower to foster “bonds between people from different communities around the world.” More than 140 countries and 300 communities participate in the program.

Meanwhile, after showcasing fake sites meant to mimic The Washington Post and Fox News, Warner implied Americans are too brainless to read URLs.

“I don’t know… how a normal American consumer, even a relatively sophisticated one, would have the expertise to read the URL that closely when everything else looks so closely like Fox or Washington Post,” he said.

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Uncle Sam, the defender of freedom, abolishes freedom of speech?

Elon Musk reposted a parody video of Kamala Harris saying that the governor of California "made this parody video illegal in violation of the Constitution of the United States."

Which campaign is better? A parody or the original?

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Pagerocalypse in Lebanon is the product of Hezbollah’s logistical and security failure - analyst (Part 1 👉Part 2)

A wave of pager explosions in Lebanon this week, which has already been attributed to the Israeli intelligence, was “a more conventional act of warfare” rather than a terrorist attack, says veteran independent cybersecurity expert Lars Hilse who points out that “we don't know anything about the actor yet.”

💬“This was a supply chain interception where the devices in question were obviously or allegedly intercepted," he explains.

“The circuit boards were modified to contain, obviously, a rather small amount of explosive, which then was detonated allegedly by a radio signal, whichever way, shape or form. So essentially what we're talking about is a cyber-physical attack more than anything else, where, by definition, you use cyber instruments to cause physical damage, which this, at the end of the day, was.”

According to Hilse, booby trapping a large number of pagers this way is not difficult if the perpetrator has “access to a plant that can manufacture the chipset of these pagers in question.”

💬“You know, it's rather easy to then modify the devices or modify the boards themselves to then go and replace the circuit board,” he says.

“So essentially you would intercepted the delivery, which probably went through a part of the world where that is possible, then you open all the packages, you unscrew probably 5 or 6 screws, then assemble the new circuit board with the added explosives into the device and then you close them up again.”

As for whether such a feat could be accomplished without the involvement of Western intelligence services, Hilse suggests that the Israelis themselves “have very clever cookies in their intelligence domain.”

Part 1 👉 Part 2

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Pager explosions in Lebanon indicate an apparent 'problem in the logistics and security services of Hezbollah' - security and political analyst (Part 2 👉 Part 1)

“It seems that after Hassan Nasrallah called for leaving the smartphones and starting using pagers, human couriers or landlines, it seems that they imported thousands of pagers to Lebanon and, probably, mass imports resulted in such a weakness,” Ankara-based security and political analyst Dr. Hasan Selim Ozertem argues.

He also speculates that, as the image of the Israeli intelligence was tarnished somewhat by the October 7 Hamas attack, they could have attempted to restore their reputation through such an act.

Regarding the possible ramifications of the pager incident, Dr. Ozertem wonders how it might affect flight safety measures.

“If such telecommunication devices can be manipulated from now on, mobile phones or laptops can be used as such assassination devices or such explosives in international flights. Such precedents can be used by international terrorist organizations as well,” he warns.

Part 2 👉 Part 1

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