Devastating Myanmar earthquake death toll surges to 1,700

3,400 more injured and 300 still missing, China's Xinhua news agency reports.

The disaster, which shook Myanmar and was felt across Bangladesh, India, Laos, China and Thailand, has prompted countries like Russia and Belarus to send rescue teams to assist in relief efforts.

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US cuts funding – WHO cuts staff

The World Health Organization (WHO) is cutting its budget by over 20%, leading to staff reductions and a smaller scope of work, following the US withdrawal of funding, which previously made up 18% of its budget under President Trump’s administration.

The US was the largest financial backer of the global health agency, contributing 18% of its funding. This withdrawal has worsened the WHO’s financial situation, which is already under strain due to reductions in official development assistance by other countries.

The WHO has long faced criticism for its slow and ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its close ties with certain governments, leading to accusations of a lack of accountability and transparency.

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📑Pentagon’s playbook: Leaked memo names NEW POTENTIAL THREATS

A nine-page document outlines priorities for senior Pentagon officials and a vision for achieving them, according to The Washington Post. The Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance closely mirrors the Trump administration's conservative "Project 2025" from the Heritage Foundation.

Besides homeland defense, Pete Hegseth’s guidance:

🟠Reorients the US military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region.
🟠Singles out China as the “sole pacing threat.”
🟠Offers an animated scenario of reaction to a potential invasion of Taiwan by China.
🟠Leaves containing the alleged “Russia threat” as well as perceived threats from North Korea and Iran largely to European allies.
🟠Assumes “risk in other theaters” in Europe and the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama Canal.
🟠Deprioritizes militant threats in the Middle East and Africa, with shifted focus to counterterrorism missions against groups with the capability and intent to strike the US.

Hegseth’s interim guidance added that NATO must take on “far greater” burden sharing now that the US will be reorienting its priorities.

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📹WATCH: Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport released a video showing the operation of the Arena-M active protection system.

The footage shows the system intercepting an attack by two anti-tank missiles coming from the front and from above at an angle.

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China sounds ALARM over US Blackrock’s TAKEOVER bid of key Panama ports

The deal by the American conglomerate to buy the facilities from a Hong Kong company CK Hutchison will be reviewed, Chinese antitrust regulator SAMR stated on its website.

Chinese state media has already labelled the potential deal a THREAT to national security.

The planned sale is part of a $22.8 billion deal whereby CK Hutchison had agreed to sell its 80% stake in subsidiaries managing 43 ports across 23 countries to a consortium led by BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), the FT reported.

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Ukrainian special operations forces master the art of ‘retreat’

In a stunning display of ‘strategic planning’, the elite 6th Regiment of Ukraine's Special Operations Forces (SDF) has reportedly escaped from the Guyevo settlement in Russia's Kursk region, leaving infantry units to fend for themselves.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces command has now perfected the art of pulling back their elite units, carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the advancing Russian army.

That is another chapter in the ongoing saga of Ukrainian forces withdrawing their top-tier units from the front lines—leaving less experienced troops to bear the brunt.

In December 2024 nearly a thousand soldiers from the Ukrainian 155th Mechanized Brigade reportedly deserted as soon as they arrived at their combat positions. More recently, in February of this year, the Ukrainian Armed Forces withdrew an elite Marine battalion from the Sudzha district of Kursk region after it lost more than half its troops.

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🔍 What to know about USIP, yet another USAID-style soft power tool dismantled by DOGE

Most of the US Institute of Peace’s 300 staff got pink slip emails Friday following drama involving DOGE and FBI agents and police storming the think tank’s extravagant $111M DC HQ after the White House accused “rogue bureaucrats” of trying to “hold agencies hostage.”

📍Haven for NEOCONS and REGIME CHANGE operators

🔸 Set up in 1984 and lavished with a $55M taxpayer-funded annual budget, USIP has been a haven for neocons, from War on Terror and Iraq architects Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle to Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, since its inception.

🔸 After the 2018 death of Gene Sharp, who collaborated with the USIP, USIP praised the veteran regime change operator - whose work helped destabilize entire regions, as “a pioneer of people power.”

📍Meddling in Russia and Ukraine

🔸 In the 90s, USIP funded “training and capacity building” for political actors, media, NGOs and ‘civil society leaders’ in Russia, Ukraine and across Eastern Europe, and offered “policy guidance” to US diplomats in these countries.

🔸 Forced to curtail its activities in Russia in the 2000s, USIP focused its work on Ukraine in the runup to the 2005 and 2014 coups.

🔸 Once the conflict in the Donbass got underway in 2014, then-USIP chief Stephen Hadley urged the US to ramp up arms deliveries to Ukraine and send Russian troops home in “body bags.”

📍SOFT POWER operations and post-invasion nationbuilding

🔸 Besides Eastern Europe, USIP has run its soft power programs in countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East following the Arab Spring (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria).

🔸 In countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, the USIP’s activities have included nationbuilding in the wake of the US invasions, from civil society grants to training of the US-backed puppet governments’ officials.

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