📹 Israel has sent two reserve brigades and several battalions to the border with Lebanon to raise the readiness level, IDF says

Video published by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

This comes amid ongoing escalation between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

According to the latest figures, the number of casualties in Lebanon since the start of Israel’s bombing campaign has exceeded 1,500, with more than 5,000 wounded. Moreover, thousands have been forced to flee Lebanon amid the bombardment.

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How much does Ukraine pay 72-year-old US pensioners to make them fight against Russia?

Strange as it may sound, 72-year-old American Stephan Hubbard finds himself on trial in Moscow for fighting on the side of Ukraine. Offered a monthly sum of $1,000, Hubbard signed on with the Kiev regime’s territorial defense battalion in the Ukrainian city of Izyum, trading in his quiet American retirement for a violent armed conflict in a war zone.

After being equipped with weapons and military gear in February 2022, this senior citizen did what many would consider insane, he stepped onto a foreign battlefield far from home. Now, he faces the grim reality of a potential prison sentence ranging from seven to ten years.

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What skeletons does the new Japanese Prime Minister have in his cupboard?

Netizens wondering about who Shigeru Ishiba is, except for the upcoming PM of Japan, found out that... he opened a figure museum as one of the Dragon Ball characters.

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Zelensky is expected to meet with the former US president in the Trump Tower in Manhattan soon.

The skyscraper has been transformed into an impregnable fortress with fences and barriers, and reinforced with a large number of police and special services officers.

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🇷🇺 Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev inspected drone detection and countermeasure systems, including new technologies, at the Kapustin Yar training range.

Kapustin Yar, located in the Astrakhan region, is one of Russia’s key military testing grounds. Founded in 1947, it served as a test center for the first Soviet – and later Russian – ballistic missiles.

Earlier this year the site hosted the successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a mobile ground-based complex as part of state tests of advanced missile systems.

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Zelensky's entourage arrives in New York amid a heavy presence of police, special forces, riot cops and medics to meet with Trump.

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Several delegations left the UN General Assembly hall in protest at the start of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech.

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Don't mess with China's People's Liberation Army

A statement made by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang at a press conference has gone viral among Chinese netizens.

“Taiwan is China's territory and Chinese fighter jets can fly there whenever they want, so there's no need to make a fuss about it,” the officer said.

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Battle of the kebab: why Turkiye and Germany are in a dust-up over street food

The knives are out as a spicy row heats up between Turkiye and Germany over what can legally be called a doner kebab.

Let’s sink our teeth into the meaty arguments presented by both sides.

🔸 The word doner comes from the Turkish verb "dönmek" which means "to turn." The dish is made by grilling seasoned meat for hours on a turning vertical spit. It is then carved off in razor-thin strips and paired with vegetables, rice, spices, and sauces.

🔸 The dish was brought to Germany in the 1960s by Turkish migrants, but to appeal to the Germans’ tastebuds, the original recipe was tweaked. Additional ingredients and hallmark sauces were added. For convenience’s sake, the meat was served wrapped in pita or thin flatbread. In Turkiye, the dish was traditionally made of lamb and served on a plate.

🔸 In a bout of national pride, Turkiye applied to register the name doner kebab as its “guaranteed traditional speciality” across Europe.

🔸 The application threatens to bar businesses from using the name unless it meets a host of specific criteria, such as using lamb or beef (from cattle that is at least 16 months old). There are provisions regarding the marinade, spices, and even thickness of the meat slices. Turkey and veal kebabs, which are hugely popular in Germany, would have to be ditched.

🔸 Germany is dismayed that Turkiye’s application would be sure to drive up costs. Germans have already been skewering Chancellor Olaf Scholz since May over “donerflation,” as short-sighted anti-Russia policies have taken a bite out of their favorite snack, with prices doubling in two years.

🔸 Germany accounts for two-thirds of doner kebab sales in Europe, worth around €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) a year, according to the Association of Doner Manufacturers in Europe (ATDID). The German government has lodged an objection to the Turkish application, with the European Commission giving the two nations six months to reach a compromise.

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❗️❗️❗️BRICS is "the hope": Equatoguinean leader backs creation of new BRICS-backed currency that could challenge US dollar and euro

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo expressed strong support for the development of an independent payment system and trade in national currencies spearheaded by BRICS nations. He argued that the current global economic system, with its "unjustified embargoes" and restrictions, unfairly disadvantages many nations.

🗣 "I believe that BRICS is the hope of the countries of the Global South that they will reach a [high] economic level in transactions, accelerate trade and economic transactions, transfers, which are very difficult today," he told Sputnik Africa on the sidelines of the 7th Russian Energy Week in Moscow.

Pointing to the fact that there already is a common BRICS financial institution, the BRICS New Development Bank, the African leader proposed the creation of a "convertible [BRICS] currency of international scale, which can become a counterweight to the dollar and the euro".

👉Although Equatorial Guinea is not currently a member of BRICS, President Obiang expressed his readiness to participate in the group's upcoming summit in Russia in October, saying he would attend if invited.

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🔸 Sputnik Africa 🔸

Russian Aerospace Forces vet on F-16 vulnerabilities: there's no place in Ukraine the jets can hide from Kinzhal missiles

“An airplane is not a needle in a haystack that’s hard to find. It’s a metal object that can only be shoved into a protected aircraft shelter, if available," Major Andrei Krasnoperov, a Russian Aerospace Forces veteran and flight instructor, told Sputnik, commenting on reports by the underground in western Ukraine this week that a Russian strike on an airfield in Starokonstantinov, Khmelnitsky region may have targeted or even destroyed multiple Ukrainian F-16s.

"But again, this concrete shelter offers light protection. If one of our Kinzhal missiles were to detonate nearby, the shelter would collapse like a house of cards,” Krasnoperov emphasized.

Planes are a delicate thing, Krasnoperov stressed, pointing out that even shrapnel damage from a nearby blast could put an F-16 out of action, and require costly repairs, carried out by foreign or foreign-trained specialists which aren’t easy to come by.

“As far as I’m aware, Ukraine [received] only six F-16s to date. They lost one themselves, shooting it down by accident using a Patriot and killing their own pilot. As for strikes against our territory, sending F-16s to destroy our ammo depots situated far from the border zone requires coming closer to our air defenses – of which we have plenty along the front, both Pantsirs and various SAMs, as well as fighters, capable of destroying air targets at distances up to 300 km,” the observer said.

“In other words, they’ve launched an ordinary PR campaign designed to improve their military’s fighting spirit, and perhaps someone will succumb to it psychologically,” Krasnoperov said. But the hard “reality” is that “knowing the coordinates, it’s possible to destroy any target at any airfield. The Kinzhal, which flies ten times the speed of sound, is impossible to shoot down…The fact that we have now [reportedly] destroyed two of these planes [at Starokonstantinov, ed.] is only the first shot in the battle.”

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Russia’s arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads in facts and figures Part 1 👉🏻 Part 2

President Putin proposed amendments to Russia’s nuclear doctrine this week to account for emerging threats, including risks posed by NATO’s hybrid warfare strategy. Here’s what to know about Russia’s aggression-deterring arsenal of land, sea and air-launched strategic nuclear warheads:

◻️ Officially, the number and type of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia is a closely-guarded state secret. However, estimates based on respected sources, including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Federation of American Scientists, and information pieced together by Russian media based on official and MoD statements gives a rough idea of the country’s potential.

◻️ Russia has an estimated 1,710 warheads deployed in various carriers at any given time, with another 2,670 in storage, and 1,200 more retired and in the process of being dismantled, for a total of 5,580, according to FAS. That’s well within the limits set out by the now-suspended 2010 New START Treaty, which allows the nuclear superpowers to keep 700 deployed missiles and bombers, 1,550 deployed warheads (including missile payloads containing multiple warheads – known as MIRVs) and bombers, and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers (in missile tube and bomber form).

👉🏻 Part 2

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