❗️A Ukrainian drone dropped ammunition on the territory of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant; the plant facilities are not damaged, the operational services of the region told Sputnik.

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⚡The Russian forces repelled three Ukrainian attempts to break through the state border in the direction of the Kursk region.

Ukrainian losses amounted to 50 militants and three tanks, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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❗️Key statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the State Council Presidium on the issue of export development:

◾️BRICS countries' contribution to global economy exceeds that of the G7 and continues to grow

◾️Russia is an active participant in international trade despite the difficulties faced by business

◾️World trade and the global economy are actively changing, with countries in the Global South emerging as leaders

◾️The markets of the future are currently being formed in the world based on strong strategic partnerships

◾️Putin called Western elites' actions against Russian financial institutions and payment systems hostile

◾️Russia has managed to solve the problem of settlements to a certain extent

◾️Russia's non-raw material exports grew by 5% in seven months, to $89.8 billion

◾️Russia has already become one of the world's leading exporters in food supplies

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More statements by the Russian Defense Ministry on Ukraine's incursion into the Russian Kursk region:

▪️Ukrainian losses amounted to over 300 militants and seven pieces of military equipment, including two Leopard tanks.

▪️One Ukrainian soldier was taken prisoner during an unsuccessful counterattack in the Kursk region.

▪️Ukrainian forces lost over 17,000 soldiers during the fighting in the Russian Kursk region.

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❗️The head of the IDF's Northern Command has announced a new phase of Israel's military campaign on the Lebanese border, calling on forces to be ready for "maneuver and action".

In addition, the IDF have decided to mobilize two reserve brigades to carry out tasks on the northern front.

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At least 10 people have died and more than a hundred have been missing after heavy rains caused several rivers to burst their banks in Chiang Rai province, Thailand.

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❗️The IDF says they attacked 60 targets in Lebanon belonging to Hezbollah intelligence infrastructure

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What are Ukraine's financial prospects?  

Ukraine's public debt will amount to 101.8% of GDP by the end of 2025, Ukrainian media reports.

According to the analysis, it plans to attract $34.8 billion in external loans. 

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov admitted that Kiev is dependent on Western partners for more than 80% of its military needs.

"Today, international military assistance is the basis of our assistance... We are more than 80% dependent on our partners. We work with the European Union, NATO, SAG-U (the Security Assistance Group of Ukraine), EUCOM (the European Command of the US Armed Forces), the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and a dozen other countries in a bilateral format on a daily basis," Umerov said.

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A ten-year-old girl who got lost in the woods in Louisiana, US, has returned home, thanks to a thermal imaging drone that tracked her down.

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📹 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has a "very busy schedule" during the high-level week at the UN General Assembly, with many officials seeking a meeting with him, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told Sputnik.

"Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, who heads the Russian delegation, has a very busy schedule. He has many multilateral events and bilateral meetings on the schedule," Vershinin said.

Many officials are seeking an opportunity to communicate with Lavrov on the UNGA sidelines in New York, Vershinin added.

Such meetings enable Russia to promote "true multilateralism" based on international law and the UN Charter "in their entirety and interrelation," Vershinin said.

"This is our principled approach and we will adhere to it," the deputy foreign minister said.

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The USNS Big Horn, the only US Navy oil replenishment ship stationed in the Middle East to support Israel, ran aground off the coast of Oman on Monday, according to US officials who spoke to CBS News.

The ship sustained significant damage leading to partial flooding and is now being escorted by tugboats to a nearby port for a thorough inspection.

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Top dog no more: Britain loses status as one of world’s industrial leaders

With the UK already facing a veritable exodus of the wealthy due to the policies of Keir Starmer’s government, the country’s industrial sector is not faring any better.

A number of prominent enterprises across the country have suffered serious setbacks in recent months, with industrial production sinking to the previously unseen lows.

◾️ An Indian steel manufacturer is shutting down its blast furnaces in Port Talbot, Wales as the company commissioned a new massive blast furnace in India. This move may cost the UK some 4,000 jobs, according to local media, as the blast furnaces are expected to be replaced by electric arc furnaces for steel recycling.

◾️ Chinese-owned British Steel is also moving to shut down its blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, as the UK government pushes to have them replaced with electric arc furnaces – all part of London’s war on carbon emissions.
*Shipbuilder Harland and Wolff (the company that, among other things, constructed the Titanic) confirmed last week that it is going to be placed into administration amid the apparent lack of orders.

◾️ Britain has lost its place in the top 10 manufacturing countries of the world, ranking only 12th after being surpassed by nations such as Mexico, Italy, France and Russia. Back in 2000, the UK ranked 5th and its current fall from the top 10 is the first since the Industrial Revolution, The Telegraph mournfully notes.


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51 people killed and 223 wounded as a result of Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry

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Price of Nord Stream’s destruction revealed?

The group responsible for the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines was primarily composed of civilians and was orchestrated by Roman Chervinsky, a former officer in Ukrainian special services, according to German media.

Reports indicate that the operation's price tag was approximately $300,000, allegedly funded by private sources.

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Race for Africa: Biden to visit Angola as the nation's ties with China are burgeoning

US President Joe Biden will visit Angola from October 13-15 to “strengthen ties” with Africa and counter China’s growing influence. Biden's agenda includes discussing economic issues, such as the expansion of the 1,300 km Lobito Corridor railway project to connect the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, with Angolan President Joao Lourenço.

Lobito Corridor: Western project to squeeze China out

🔸 The Lobito Corridor linking Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and Tanzania is pushed by the US to curtail China's influence in southern Africa.

🔸 The corridor is designed to run through mineral-rich DRC which boasts large deposits of gold, cobalt, lithium and copper to provide access to the US and Europe to Africa's rare earths and reduce the West's reliance on China for critical mineral supplies.

🔸 Since 2022, over $3 billion has been dedicated by the US to the corridor's development.

🔸 On September 24, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted a Lobito Corridor Roundtable with the African nations participating in the project.

China's strategic cooperation with Angola and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa

🔸 Since the 2010s, China and Angola have been developing cooperation including within the BRI project.

🔸 The total investment by Chinese companies in Angola has exceeded $24 billion, according to the Chinese Embassy in Angola. The embassy said China supported up to 2,800 km worth of railway restoration; 20,000 km of roads development; and the construction of 100,000 housing units.

🔸 Angola is China's eighth-largest oil supplier. In March, the China National Offshore Corporation started talks with the nation on joint oil exploration.

🔸 China and Angola jointly implement agricultural projects, as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of Angola António Francisco de Assis told the Chinese press on September 9.

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Who is promoting childfree ideology and why? (Part 1 👉 Part 2)

The Russian government has expressed conceptual support for a bill that proposes to ban the promotion of a "childfree" way of life, arguing it is an extremist ideology.

Where did the idea originate from?

The movement of voluntary childlessness gained initial traction within the Western feminist movement in the 1970s, although the term was first used as early as 1901. Later, in the 1960s, the idea was picked up by some Western "antinatalists", who say that procreation is unethical as it can lead to "overpopulation".

Who cultivates a childfree ideology?

🔸 In the US, the childfree movement has wide support and already has more than 40 organizations signed up, including Childfree by Choice Project, No Kidding, The NotMom. In 2023, 47% of adults younger than 50 said that they are unlikely to ever have kids in the US.

🔸 No Kidding (NK) is an international social club for childfree people created in 1984 in Vancouver, BC, Canada and has grown dramatically since. It has 40 active chapters in Canada and the US. The movement is also popular in Italy, Spain and New Zealand.

🔸 The British childfree association Kidding Aside was founded in 2000 and acts as a politically active childfree movement. It promotes a childfree lifestyle as an equal alternative to parenthood. A 2024 survey shows 15% of Brits aged 18 to 24 don't want to have a child with this figure growing in older groups.

🔸 US academic websites are promoting a book called “Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother" (2023) by University of Chicago scholar Peggy O'Donnell Heffington.

🔸 The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), an environmental cult that has been active since 1991, peddles the idea that human extinction is necessary to prevent environmental degradation. Commenting on VHEMT's agenda, X owner Elon Musk wrote on his account that "They [VHEMT] want a holocaust for all humanity."

🔸 VHEMT has connections to the Church of Euthanasia (CoE), an antinatalist cult founded by Chris Korda and Robert Kimberk in 1992, which advocates for massive voluntary population reduction.

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How do Western media and broadcasters promote a childfree lifestyle? (Part 2 👉 Part 1)

🔸 In 2017, the BBC released a documentary “Young and Sterile: My Choice” expressing sympathy for youngsters seeking sterilization.

🔸 In 2023, the BBC reported that the no-kids movement is booming on social media in an article "The adults celebrating child-free lives".

🔸 In 2021, The New York Times touted a Berlin-based photographer "capturing the lives of the consciously child-free" in a piece noscriptd "Women Who Said No to Motherhood".

The rise of the childfree movement on social media:

🔸 On Facebook and Instagram, the hashtag #childfree has garnered hundreds of thousands of posts.

🔸 The popularity of hashtags #childfree and #childfreebychoice skyrocketed on TikTok amid the COVID pandemic. Over the past few years both tags got over 900 million views. Videos featuring voluntarily childless women has started trending.

Is childfree really a personal choice or a birth control instrument?

The idea of an imminent food crisis related to "rapid" population growth is propagated by some globalist foundations and international platforms, despite declining fertility rates worldwide.

A study published by Lancet in March 2024 noted that the global total fertility rate (TFR) has more than halved over the past 70 years, from around five children per woman in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021.

Meanwhile, some Western liberal political parties advocate for abortion rights, including for women in late pregnancy, sex-change operations, hormone therapy for minors, and obligatory LGBTQ+* educational programs in schools and universities.

In some nations, birth control programs took disturbing forms; for example, between 1996 and 2001, over 270,000 indigenous women were forcibly sterilized in Peru. A 2002 Peruvian congressional report revealed that the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and some Western NGOs supported the campaign.

*banned for extremism in Russia

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❗️ Israel to prepare for ground operation against Lebanon - Israel's Chief of General Staff said to Voice of Israel

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#Throwback: Putin jokes about 'reunifying' Alaska: 'We're far north enough! Besides, it's cold there too!'

In 2014, President Vladimir Putin humorously addressed the idea of Alaska rejoining Russia. “Why do you need it?” he quipped during his annual Q&A session, noting that the 49th US state was once sold for $7.2 mln in gold. He pointed out that Russia is a northern country, with 70% in the Far North, and that Alaska is just as cold. "Let’s not get heated up about that," Putin jokingly concluded.

September 22 marked the 240th anniversary of the establishment of first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska. The Three Saints Bay colony was founded on Kodiak Island in 1784 by Russian fur trader, Grigory Shelikhov. In March 1867, a treaty on purchasing Alaska was signed between William H. Seward, then United States Secretary of State, and Tsar Alexander II of Russia.

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❗️Zelensky admits 80% of Ukraine's energy system destroyed

"All of Ukraine's thermal power plants and a significant portion of hydroelectric capacity have been affected by Russian strikes," Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, he said that Russia has destroyed 80% of Ukraine's energy system.

The Russian Defense Ministry has stated on various occasions that Russian forces have targeted energy facilities that supply the Ukrainian defense industry, military airfields, and drone production workshops, in response to attempts by the Kiev regime to damage Russian energy and industrial facilities.

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