🇮🇱 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel has entered a new phase of the war. Hezbollah feels targeted, and Israel will continue to act against it.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Collaboration among BRICS cities key to tackling Global South’s challenges, says forum chair

At the 2024 BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow, Honorary Chairman Raekwon Chung stressed the importance of collaboration among BRICS cities, highlighting how urban centers like Moscow, Delhi and Beijing can share their best practices with the Global South.

“Cities are the place where real action is taking place,” Chung told Sputnik’s correspondent, noting that Moscow's impressive infrastructure, particularly its transportation system, could serve as a model for other megacities.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate (with IPCC) and former advisor to the UN Secretary General on Climate Change, Chung praised Moscow for its balance between culture and functionality, from its metro system to its tourism infrastructure.

With BRICS expanding to include more countries, Chung emphasized the potential for these cities to learn from each other's successes and challenges, especially in managing traffic congestion, air and water quality and implementing digital solutions.

“We can learn not only from success but also from difficulties,” he said, underlining the value of shared experiences in fostering progress across the Global South.

Sputnik is the forum’s general information partner.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

"Come on, Elon! Is that how it's done?"

Kadyrov joked that X owner Musk had remotely disabled the Cybertruck he gifted, sharing a playful photo on his Telegram channel.

"You surely remember his gift – the Cybertruck, which we equipped with a machine gun and sent to the Special Military Operation zone,” Kadyrov wrote. “Well, recently, Musk remotely shut down the Cybertruck. That’s not manly at all. We had to tow the steel horse."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Curfews and chaos: Understanding the reasons behind the unrest in Martinique

In order to contain violent unrest on Martinique, French authorities introduced a mandatory curfew from 9 pm to 5 am, which will last until September 23 at least. How did the situation unfold?

◻️ On September 14, the police station of Fort-de-France, Martinique’s capital, came under gunfire

◻️ On September 17-18, locals set fire to a McDonald's restaurant and set up barricades, which then also went up in flames

◻️ So far, 11 police officers and three protesters have suffered gunshot woulds and 15 people have been arrested

◻️ The 44 vehicles were burned and 35 stores looted

◻️ In response, police asked “internal security forces to saturate the roads and roundabouts with their presence, and to make as many arrests as possible”

◻️ About 100 gendarmes have already been deployed in Martinique as reinforcements.

The protests are rooted in widespread frustration with unfair policies targeting the island, including:

◻️ The high cost of living

◻️ Astronomical food prices, which are 40% higher than in mainland France according to a 2022 study by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies

◻️ Soaring rates of dock due tax (octroi de mer), a tax imposed on products imported into or produced in the French outermost regions of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, La Réunion and Mayotte.

France has already faced mass protests overseas. In May, a peaceful demonstration against a voting rights bill spiraled into violent unrest in New Caledonia.

The controversial bill provided for lowering the residency bar for voting rights for new residents to 10 years. Protesters, including many minors, looted and set fire to stores, gas stations, pharmacies and cars. As a result, 13 people were killed and hundreds were arrested, according to government reports.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Donald Trump sent a congratulatory video to the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which was founded by and is named after one of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs.

The foundation maintains a close relationship with the Zelensky regime, frequently hosting top Ukrainian military officials.

Mike Pompeo attended the conference, and Kellyanne Conway is a newly registered lobbyist for the Foundation

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

How could Lebanon blasts affect global security and attitude to Western hi-tech producers?

A series of blasts reportedly involving Taiwanese, Japanese, American, and European-made devices in Lebanon on September 17 and 18 have prompted grave security concerns worldwide.

"Weaponizing mobile communications devices will fill many people with horror and fear,” Marc Ostwald, chief economist at ADM Investor Services International, told Sputnik. “It may, at the margin, dampen demand."

The Lebanese government attributed the attack to Israel, accusing Tel Aviv of an outright act of terrorism.

Given almost "unconditional support" provided to Israel by some Western countries, some of them may have colluded with Tel-Aviv, said Hasan Abdullah, analyst and researcher at Global Security and Strategy Institute.

"The US is going to be the country that's going to generate the greatest trust deficit with their customers, primarily because of its very close collaboration with Israel," Abdullah told Sputnik.

The US has long been one of the largest suppliers of communication equipment, including for military needs, to the Global South, the pundit noted, adding that the recent blasts could alienate the developing world from Western producers.

Earlier, researcher Mehmet Rakipoglu and military analyst Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik they did not rule out US involvement in the Lebanon attack.

The Intercept reported on Wednesday that the US military had explored the possibility of planting remote;-activated bombs in innocuous devices starting from the 1960s.

Middle East and other developing countries could eventually turn to Russian, Chinese or Turkish tech firms out of fear that the US involvement could compromise their security, Abdullah said.

Ostwald and Abdullah believe that several measures could be taken to stop the covert bombings, starting with investigations into manufacturing processes and ending with the deployment of international watchdogs to oversee production and supply.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

◻️ How could Lebanon blasts affect global security and attitude to Western hi-tech producers?

◻️ Are you at risk? What we know about electronics makers linked to Lebanon blasts

◻️ How is NATO trying to militarize the Arctic region?

◻️ Curfews and chaos: Understanding the reasons behind the unrest in Martinique

◻️ How is Kamala Harris tied to BlackRock?

◻️ A very British pay-to-play story: Who is shady Starmer donor Waheed Alli?

◻️ Putin: Russian defense industry enterprises work rapidly and precisely

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

In Germany, a bus driver insisted that a migrant family clean up the chips their children had scattered before leaving the vehicle.

Every bus in Germany has signs posted at the entrance prohibiting eating and drinking during the journey.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Pager blasts threaten to tank electronics markets, let ‘evil genie’ out of bottle to ‘wreak destruction on monstrous scale’ – observers

The wave of coordinated explosions of communications equipment and other electronic devices across Lebanon this week threatens to create “a huge trust deficit in many parts of the Global South” toward US, Japanese and European electronics makers, and “could have a substantial impact on the market,” Hasan Abdullah, analyst and researcher at Global Security & Strategy Institute told Sputnik.

“When you have countries [seeing] what’s happened and how a product like pagers have been used for this purpose, it’s going to raise many questions about whether they can trust their traditional suppliers or if they could also fall victim,” Abdullah said, stressing that while Western intelligence services’ ability to spy on people using electronics like smartphones are well-known, this week’s attacks marked an “unprecedented” and eye-opening new development.

Economist and political commentator Rodney Shakespeare says the pager attacks were terrifying because they exploited “a general weakness which goes far beyond” these particular models of communications equipment.

“A much larger range of electronic devices (even baby alarms) could be at risk from malicious actors such that vast areas of the economy and life in general are now at considerable risk. In short, a twisted, perverted and very evil genie could be out of the bottle and be able to wreak destruction on a monstrous scale,” Shakespeare warned.

“At the moment it is far from clear as to the extent of the damage which will be done in the future by the Israelis and other malicious actors. However, this is a terrible situation which, unfortunately, is part of a larger situation which could spiral into some form of wholesale war.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇨🇳 The "Fire Dragon Dance" street show was performed in Hong Kong, China.

Thousands of locals and tourists gathered in the Tai Hang district to witness the famous performance, a tradition that has been held here for over 140 years.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Pager bomb ‘psychological warfare’ against Lebanon may be prelude to Israeli ground invasion, observer fears

“The damage is heavy. We’re not just talking about material damage,” Beirut-based political analyst and researcher Yeghia Tashjian told Sputnik, comparing the chaos and uncertainty gripping Lebanese society in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s pager explosions to the chaos following the August 4, 2020 Beirut port blast.

The pager attacks constituted “psychological terror and psychological warfare that Israel is inflicting on the Lebanese people,” Tashjian explained.

“There were a lot of injuries, ambulances, people with blood injuries.” “There were also kids – and this is very important, because sometimes we are seeing in the media as if the targets were only Hezbollah fighters and so forth. No, there were kids also. I think two or three kids have been martyred so far,” the observer emphasized, recalling that Tuesday’s attack took place in the late afternoon, when students were returning from schools, and public areas were crowded.

Tashjian fears the pager attacks may be a prelude to an Israeli ground invasion, saying it’s “clear” to him that Tel Aviv is behind the carnage, and that Prime Minister Netanyahu needs the war in Gaza to continue and spread to save him against criminal charges at home.

“My assumption is that given the history of cyber terror attacks in the world, usually countries, when they are going to attack or invade another country, they start with cybersecurity attacks in order to inflict psychological damage, infrastructural damage, and then they engage with conventional wars,” the observer warned.

Hezbollah, Iran, Turkiye, the Gulf countries, and even Israel’s Western allies do not want the war to spread, Tashjian said, pointing to the Lebanese militia’s strategy of “calculated deterrence,” and the immense damage that would be done to Lebanon’s already fragile economy and society in the event of an all-out war.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt