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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa held a two-day summit with Saudi Arabia on mostly economic matters. At the conclusion of the summit, he confirmed the intent of Saudi Arabia to join the BRICS economic coalition, which should not come as a surprise given the previous statements by Saudi leader and Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS).

Like much of Europe, New England is transforming its electric grid, retiring coal, oil and nuclear plants, leaving it largely dependent on natural gas...Just over half of the electricity produced in New England comes from gas, which is largely imported through a network of pipelines that were largely laid down decades ago. The remaining balance of gas is imported...from overseas...While New England’s electricity is less carbon-intensive than much of the country’s... residents also pay some of the highest rates in the country...thanks to opposition both in New England itself and in neighboring states, especially New York, to building new pipelines....

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday officially kicked off the application process for his student debt cancellation program and announced that 8 million borrowers had already applied for loan relief during the federal government’s soft launch period over the weekend. He encouraged the tens of millions eligible for potential relief to visit studentaid.gov and touted the application form that the president said would take less than five minutes to complete. An early, “beta launch” version of the online form released late Friday handled the early stream of applications “without a glitch or any difficulty,” Biden said. “It means...

Former president Donald Trump’s company charged the Secret Service as much as five times more than the government rate for agents to stay overnight at Trump hotels while protecting him and his family, according to expense records newly obtained by Congress. The records show that in 40 cases the Trump Organization billed the Secret Service far higher amounts than the approved government rate — in one case charging agents $1,185 a night to stay at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. The new billing documents, according to a congressional committee’s review, show that U.S. taxpayers paid the president’s company at...

Rising COVID-19 cases in Europe are setting off warnings that the U.S. could experience a new surge this winter. Previous jumps in the U.S. have followed a pattern in which cases first rise in Europe, making officials nervous they could see a spike in U.S. cases as the weather turns. The most recent data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that cases began going up around the beginning of September in Europe. The seven-day average is roughly 230,000 cases per day, reflecting rates that were seen in late July when Europe was still dealing with the...

Republicans made massive gains with independent women in recent weeks as Democrats ramped up their messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections.Forty-nine percent of voters plan to vote for the Republican nominee to represent their House district while 45 percent said they’d back their Democratic opponent, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday. Of particular note was a 32 point swing among independent women toward the GOP. In September’s iteration of the poll, Democrats boasted a 14 point lead among that demographic, but by October, Republicans held an 18 point advantage.While Democratic officials and progressive commentators...

I ride around Philadelphia with no car insurance. I have fake registration stickers and the police can’t pull me over for an expired inspection. You can’t pull me over if you smell pot coming from my car. And even if I match a description of a perp, there’s no way in hell you can stop and frisk me. If I steal your identity, rob you, or get caught with marijuana with intent to deliver, I don’t have to make cash bail. I can steal your kid’s bike, punch your mother and take her pocketbook on the El, and rob the...

Former President Donald Trump holds a commanding lead over the rest of a potential 2024 GOP primary field, a poll from Cygnal provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release shows.The national survey, conducted October 10-12 with a margin of error of 2.82 percent, polled 1,204 likely 2024 GOP primary voters nationally. It found Trump leading the possible field with a near-majority at 45 percent. The next closest competitor was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who trailed Trump by nearly 20 percent and came in down at 26 percent.After that, former Vice President Mike Pence comes in at 9...

Official figures on deaths collated from 27 countries around Europe reveal the continent has suffered more excess deaths in 2022 than in any of the past five years, even surpassing deaths in the first year of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic. All age groups are suffering a considerable number of excess deaths every single week. But the official data reveals that the reason 2022 is a record-breaking year so far for excess deaths is due to the fact so many children and young adults are now dying. EuroMOMO is a European mortality monitoring project. The organisation states that its aim is...

'Tis the season...for a repost.

MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has said he’s hoping a bill seeking to ban propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations will be passed fast enough to be submitted to the president for signing in November. The bill, which is sponsored by several Duma factions, could be introduced to the legislature and adopted in its first reading next week, he said. "If a decision is made, the bill should be submitted next week under the sponsorship of several factions, and be adopted in the first reading over the next week. Then come the second and third readings, and...

Climate activists imagine a world in which all the burden falls on the rich. On Friday morning, two young women approached Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” on display in the National Gallery in London, and hurled tomato soup across the blooms, before gluing themselves to the gallery wall. The two activists were part of a climate-protest outfit with an illuminating name: Just Stop Oil. Celebrating their vandalism, the group declared that the “disruption is in response to the government’s inaction on both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis,” and that it was deliberately timed to protest both the...

Donald Trump charged the Secret Service as much as five times the typical government rate to stay at his properties, records obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveal. The development is only the latest example of the former president using the office to enrich himself. “The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents’ frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former President’s self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump’s struggling businesses,” Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wrote to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, The Washington Post reported on Monday....

Team from UNSW Engine Research Laboratory develop new Hydrogen-Diesel Direct Injection Dual-Fuel System that significantly cuts carbon emissions. Hydrogen-Diesel Direct Injection Dual-Fuel System team The Hydrogen-Diesel Direct Injection Dual-Fuel System has been developed by a team from the UNSW Engine Research Laboratory led by Professor Shawn Kook (right), and including Xinyu Liu (back left) and Jinxin Yang (front left). Photo from Prof. Shawn Kook ********************************************************************************** Engineers from UNSW Sydney have successfully converted a diesel engine to run as a hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine – reducing CO2 emissions by more than 85 per cent in the process. The team, led by Professor...

Doug Brignole, an icon in the world of bodybuilding and an author, has died at the age of 63. The cause of death has not been revealed yet. Brignole strongly supports with vaccination against COVID. His last statement on the subject of vaccine safety has been widely shared on the internet. “I have enough confidence in the vaccine, based on my research, to get it done,” Brignole said. “Those of you who think the vaccine kills people can use me as a test. If I die, you were right. If I don’t die, and have no ill effects, you were...

A professional bodybuilder who trusted the Covid vaccine enough to challenge anti-vax conspiracists to use him as a case study suddenly died last week.Author and veteran competitive bodybuilder Doug Brignole, 62, reportedly passed away last Thursday, with not much else known other than the fact he was extremely fit and healthy prior to his death and was evidently preparing to compete in the 2022 AU Mr. Universe competition in Las Vegas this week. Following his untimely passing, netizens discovered Brignole was gung-ho about the Covid vaccine, so much so that at one point he encouraged anti-vaxxers to use him as...

The IRS is a climate agency now. The massive climate and energy law enacted by Democrats in August puts the IRS at the forefront of the effort to incentivize renewable energy across the economy. Of the nearly $370 billion of climate spending in the new law, about $270 billion will be delivered through tax incentives for electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, solar power and other “clean” energy technologies. “The IRS is at the center of it because the way that you get this cash that the federal government has basically earmarked for all these things is through tax credits and benefits...

And so I came into office almost a year after it happened. First week in office, we removed the sheriff of this county. We then convened a special grand jury that investigated failures not just here but other parts of the country … [and] other parts of the state about different types of school security, and that led to this report, where we then removed the number of the school board members who were derelict. “And that’s good, but then you’re sitting there last week and you see, four and a half years after this happen, they do that the...

Ukraine's Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate announced a reward of $100,000 on Saturday for the capture of Igor "Strelkov" Girkin. Girkin is a former Russian FSB agent and a key figure in Russia’s initial occupation of Ukraine in 2014, when he led Kremlin-backed separatists to seize Slovyansk, in the Donetsk Oblast. A former Russian intelligence officer who once boasted he had “pulled the trigger of war” in Ukraine, Girkin served as the leader of the Kremlin’s forces in Slovyansk in the first months of the 2014 conflict. Going by the pseudonym Igor Strelkov (which means “shooter” in Russian). Girkin was...

Two Tibetans have died from a pneumonic plague spread by mice and other rodents in a southern county of Tibet, with Chinese authorities now ordering county residents to stay at home, RFA has learned. The two victims, who lived in Lhoka city in Lhoka (in Chinese, Shannan) prefecture’s Tsona (Cuona) county, both died in September, a source living in the region told RFA, adding that neither has been publicly identified. “Moreover, people are not allowed to discuss it,” the source said, requesting anonymity in order to speak freely. “But we have learned that the two individuals had been helping someone...