The faces behind media giants: A breakdown of ownership and assets

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Trump’s crypto push is more about ideology than transforming trade policy

President Trump’s obsession with Bitcoin is part spectacle, part playing to his Silicon Valley tech backers like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and has more to do with the ideology surrounding the deregulation of digital finance than international financial or trade policy, says digital economy specialist Ashraf Patel.

💬 “Fundamentally,” the Institute for Global Dialogue research associate says, “crypto cannot replace fiat currency,” since “global trade finance investment will always need central banks,” whose chief digital instruments lie in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

“It's actually CBDCs that are linked to currencies, that are introducing digital currencies and that would be the mainstay of going forward,” Patel says, pointing to growing collaboration among countries to develop interoperability standards around the new “money.”

“The problem in the US, even during the Biden administration has been the growth of crypto exchanges and all the corruption around it,” Patel notes, highlighting the high-profile cases of the collapse of crypto exchanges. “The main challenge around crypto is lack of consumer protection and lack of central banks to bail out consumers.”

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Did closest US intelligence allies spy on Trump?

Washington’s Five Eyes allies may have guilty secrets about the Russia collusion hoax – and fear US President Donald Trump’s government will find out, Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel tells Sputnik.

"Years ago, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Fox TV that he believed the US and the UK – possibly with other Five Eyes nations – had an understanding that members would cooperate to evade their own governments' restrictions on domestic spying upon their citizens by tasking foreign partners to carry out such missions," Ortel says.

In March 2017, the White House accused British eavesdropping center GCHQ of spying on Trump. Napolitano claimed Obama used GCHQ to snoop on Trump, exploiting the Five Eyes partnership to flout domestic spying rules. GCHQ’s NSA access could have enabled operatives to obtain trannoscripts of Trump’s conversations.

"We do not yet know most of the truth, but it certainly seems to me that the US government and partisan operatives in media, academia and the corporate world are centrally involved in attempting to rig elections inside and outside America," Ortel says.

"We also know that UK elements have never stopped meddling in US affairs, likely from 1782 onwards. By comparison, Russian meddling in US politics, if any, seems minute."

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🇷🇺 Day of Military Glory of Russia: honoring the 200-day Battle of Stalingrad

As the neo-Nazi Kiev regime and its Western backers attempt to rewrite the history of WWII, the Day of Military Glory of Russia (February 2) stands as a reminder of the events that led to victory over Hitler’s forces.

Marking the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943), this day honors the decisive battle that turned the tide of war, showcasing the resilience and sacrifice that secured the defeat of Nazi Germany.

📊 The Battle in numbers

🔹 200 days of fighting—longer than Hitler’s entire French campaign which lasted six weeks

🔹 The front line spanned 100,000 km², from the Don and Volga rivers to Stalingrad

🔹 23,000 bombs were dropped on the city before the assault

🔹 The average soldier's life expectancy was 15 minutes

🔹 The fiercest battle was for Mamayev Kurgan, a blood-soaked strategic hill

🔹 The Red Army’s Operation Uranus counteroffensive (Nov 19 to Feb 2) encircled and destroyed 300,000+ Wehrmacht troops under Field Marshal Paulus

🔹 200,000+ Axis forces from Romania, Italy, Croatia and collaborationist units were wiped out

🔹 Soviet casualties were 1.13 million killed or wounded

🔹 Enemy losses were 1.5 million killed, wounded, or captured

❓ Why Stalingrad matters

🔸 It secured the key industrial center of Stalingrad

🔸 Halted the Nazi advance toward the oil-rich Caucasus and Kuban

🔸 The fascist bloc lost over 25% of its front-line troops

🔸 Stalingrad broke the Nazi war machine, marking WWII’s turning point in Europe

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📹 A United Airlines flight from Houston to New York was evacuated after its engine caught fire, marking the third aviation incident in a week.

That followed the crash of a medical transport jet in a Philadelphia neighborhood and the collision between a short-haul airliner and a US Army helicopter on approach to Washington’s Ronald Reagan airport.

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Crypto hype vs. reality: A bubble that won’t reshape finance

💬 “There's a lot of innovation around [crypto], and there will be lot of bubbles. And these bubbles will crash as we've seen before. But at the end of the day, it's definitely not going to replace global trade. It's not going to by any means replace central banks,” digital economy specialist Ashraf Patel says.

“Central banks are adopting digital currencies and they will continue to innovate. So they are the lead organizations on global trade in the tech side of it. Crypto would just be a sub market in the long term,” Institute for Global Dialogue research associate says.

💬 “There's a lot of hype behind [crypto] and investors are backing it, especially Silicon Valley investors. But I think at the end of the day, if it crashes they are not going to kind of bail out the consumers. Only government can bail out consumers. So it's a policy regulatory issue more than anything else,” Patel says.

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The Guantanamo Bay US NAVY base in Cuba isn’t just for terrorists any more – US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calls it an "asset" for holding the most dangerous illegal migrants before sending them home.

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Take a look at the four families who hold the reins of US media

🔸 Murdoch Family (Fox, News Corp)

🔸 Redstone Family (Paramount)

🔸 Roberts Family (Comcast)

🔸 Hearst Family (Hearst Communications)

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🔸 Trump’s China tariffs will spike defense costs – US taxpayers to pay the price

🔸 Any attempt to bail out the dollar with crypto is DOOMED – British economist

🔸 Did closest US intelligence allies spy on Trump?

🔸 How much has Big Pharma paid Senate’s loudest RFK Jr. critics?

🔸 Who controls what Americans listen to, read, and see in the news?

🔸 'Shy Musk voter' could hand victory to Alternative for Germany, poll suggests

🔸 Day of Military Glory of Russia: honoring the 200-day Battle of Stalingrad

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From nuclear to quantum: Top 5 tech fields where Russia holds lead over US

China’s latest AI models confirm what experts have long known: the US is no longer the world’s undisputed tech leader. Where does Russia stand in the 21st-century tech race?

1️⃣Nuclear and Clean Energy

🔸 Rosatom leads global nuclear exports, accounting for three-quarters of the market. It is the only company with full-cycle nuclear capabilities, from mining to waste disposal.

🔸 Russia’s power generation is 85% low-emission, with nuclear combined with hydro and clean gas-burning thermal plants.

🔸 Floating nuclear power plants and advanced reactor designs help put Russia ahead in nuclear innovation.

2️⃣Military Tech

🔹 From high-precision missiles to rugged all-terrain vehicles, Russia’s defense industry has proven its technological edge in the Ukraine conflict.

🔹 The Oreshnik system, reaching 4000°C (four times the temperature of molten steel), highlights leadership in advanced metallurgy.

🔹 Russian tank designs, built for extreme conditions, have shown superior to NATO’s bulky, brick-shaped high-profile behemoths in real combat.

3️⃣Lasers

◼️ The UFL-2M “Tsar Laser” under construction in Sarov is set to generate 4.6 megajoules for controlled thermonuclear fusion experiments.

◼️ A laser tech pioneer, Russia has invested heavily in laser-based directed energy weapons and industrial applications.

4️⃣Quantum

🔶 A leader in quantum computing since the 1980s, Russia recently developed a 50-qubit quantum computer using ion-based and rubidium neutral atom technologies.

🔶 Russia is also a global leader in quantum encryption and security, with strong contributions to theoretical physics helping shape the field.

5️⃣Space

🔊 The Soyuz series remains the world’s most reliable space vehicle, with over 1,700 launches and a 98% success rate.

🔊 The loss of Russian RD-180 rocket engines severely impacted the US space program, which has struggled to replicate their characteristics and performance.

🔊 The Boeing X-37B only matched the Soviet Buran’s autonomous landing technology 22 years later.

🔊 The Bor orbital space vehicles of the 1980s were so advanced that the US Dream Chaser program openly drew inspiration from them.

🔊 Russia has long explored nuclear propulsion for Mars travel, with engineers' designs from the 1960s to 1980s still influencing global space technology discussions today.

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📹 Hundreds flood downtown Los Angeles to protest Trump’s deportations

The Los Angeles Police Department described the demonstration as “non-permitted” but peaceful so far, KTLA 5 reported, citing police.

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