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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired the commander of the country's air force Friday, four days after an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners crashed during a Russian bombardment. The order to dismiss Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk was published on the presidential website. "We need to protect people. Protect personnel. Take care of all our soldiers," Zelenskyy said in an address minutes after the order was published. He said Ukraine needs to strengthen its army on the command level. The dismissal came on the same day that Oleshchuk directed scathing criticism at a lawmaker who is deputy head...

uthorities in Denver are investigating "multiple racist signs" that were placed near bus stops along Colfax Avenue and appear to be the work of a controversial street artist. The first signs were spotted around 5 a.m. on August 29, at the intersection of East Colfax Avenue and Oneida Street, according to RTD. Additional signs have been found on Colfax at Garfield and Yosemite streets. The signs include wording such as "Blacks must sit on the back of the bus. Kamala's migrants sit in front," referencing Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee whose husband is visiting Colorado today....

Jose Huizar’s downfall at Los Angeles City Hall was as stunning as his rise to success, a political tragedy that, like many in the land of dreams, has become a familiar one. Born to a large family in rural Mexico and raised in poverty near the towering high-rises of downtown Los Angeles, he overcame enormous odds to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University and UCLA law school. He returned to his old neighborhood in East Los Angeles to run for the school board and eventually the City Council, where he gained control of the influential committee that...

A Berlin Holocaust memorial honoring non-Jews who protested against the persecution of their Jewish family members was vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti on Wednesday, according to the Berlin Police and European Jewish Congress. "Jews are committing genocide," was scrawled across the Rosenstrasse protest memorial according to EJC. A Palestinian flag and the slogan "free Palestine" was spraypainted on the ground in front of the sculptures. The Berlin police said that it covered the graffiti and the investigation was transferred to state law enforcement that investigates politically-motivated crime.Gem "This outrageous disrespect of Shoah victims doesn't advance the Palestinian cause," said the EJC....

The alleged drunk driver who fatally plowed down NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his younger brother in southern New Jersey Thursday night appeared to sigh with exasperation when he learned he would be in jail through next week. Sean Higgins, 43, was arraigned on two counts of second degree vehicle manslaughter by the Salem County Court at 1 p.m. Friday. Judge Michael J. Silvanio ordered Higgins to be held until his detention hearing next Thursday, September 5.

One of the F-16 fighter jets sent from Nato allies to Ukraine has been destroyed, a Ukrainian military source has told the BBC. The aircraft went down amid a barrage of Russian missiles on Monday, killing pilot Oleksiy Mes, Ukraine's military said. It marks the first loss of its kind since the planes were delivered earlier this month. The cause of the crash was not a direct result of an enemy missile strike, the Ukrainian military claims. It said the pilot destroyed three cruise missiles and one drone in Russia's largest aerial attack to date.

Ansarallah, the Shiite jihadist terror organization commonly known as the Houthis, published a video on Thursday that it claimed showed its members boarding the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion and planting bombs while chanting, “Allahu akbar.” The Houthis, who control the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and launched a terrorist campaign to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea late in 2023, attacked the Sounion on August 21, reportedly using projectiles and a private attack at sea. The attack necessitated the evacuation of the ship’s crew, leaving the oil tanker and its cargo of 150,000 tons of crude oil abandoned, a floating...

The latest polling out of the crucial swing state of Michigan shows former President Donald Trump leading incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris by a single point. In a race that includes third-party candidates, Trump leads CacklyMcNeverBorderCzar 46 to 45 percent. n a two-way race, Trump still leads, 47 to 46 percent. The poll, taken after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Trump, also shows Harris and Trump with statistically equal favorable/unfavorable ratings. Harris sits at 46 to 49 percent favorable/unfavorable, while Trump sits at 46 to 49 percent. In Michigan’s race for the U.S. Senate, Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin earns 48...

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has surely benefited from his portrayal as the country’s “football dad.” But he wouldn’t have passed the truth test in my father’s household, where lying was ranked as the highest punishable offense. I’m not saying that Walz lies, precisely. But he tends to gild his résumé for political gain. He’s hardly the first to do this. And it’s not always detrimental to one’s career, as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), has proved. Blumenthal claimed to be a Vietnam veteran even though he sought and received at least five deferments to avoid serving in the war. Walz, too,...

As a society, we've largely moved past the "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" paradigm, stocking the toy box with trucks and dolls, side-by-side. Even interest in %6gender-neutral and unisex names is increasing. And, there are currently over one million adults in the U.S alone who identify as non-binary. But the fashion space doesn't always reflect the needs and wants of its consumers

The Deputy PM was seen partying away in front of a huge crowd ahead of Parliament's return from summer recess next week. A clip, shared by actress Denise van Outen, shows Ms Rayner dressed in red as she dances to a remix of Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know. She described it as a "surprise booth rave up with Angela Rayner". Ms Rayner is believed to have flown to Ibiza following her meeting with mayors, regulators and fire chiefs about unsafe cladding on Wednesday. It is not the first time she has enjoyed a rave, with the minister having...

KYIV/PRAGUE (Reuters) -Ukraine will continue to meet its obligations to transit Russian oil to Europe, a presidential aide said on Friday after earlier suggesting it could halt supplies via the Druzhba pipeline next year.Comments by Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak, reported by local media on Friday, had suggested flows of Russian oil may stop from January, but he later said Ukraine supported EU efforts to diversify its oil supply and would not break contracts running to 2029."Ukraine has fulfilled and will fulfill its contractual obligations in full until the scheduled completion date... because it concerns our bilateral relations with European...

Special counsel Jack Smith tried to strike a careful balance in the revised indictment he brought against Donald Trump on Tuesday — hoping to salvage enough of his election-interference case to get it to a jury without running afoul of the Supreme Court’s new and vague definition of presidential immunity. A day earlier, Smith filed an appeal in his other prosecution of the former president, hoping to resurrect the classified documents indictment that a trial judge had thrown out. In both instances, Smith is trying to nurse back to health cases with potentially fatal ailments: in Florida, a set of...

For many Americans, the Covid pandemic and draconian lockdowns it ushered in feel like a thing of the past. Biden declared the pandemic over last May, and it's not been viewed as a major voter issue since. But for some Americans, the masking and social distancing never ended. Sara Anne Willette, from New Jersey, has spent more than 1,600 days in isolation, rarely leaving home and planning to further isolate to the countryside. Her hope is to get back to gardening, running, and drinking coffee on the porch. She even plans to buy enough land so other immunocompromised people who...

Politicization of intelligence at the CIA reached new levels of activism under President Biden, according to an academic analysis of recent political influence within the agency. John A. Gentry, a former CIA analyst who has written extensively on the topic, stated in a recent journal article that the problem accelerated during the Trump administration when current and former intelligence officials worked to undermine Mr. Trump and his presidency through leaks and public statements. Mr. Gentry compared current politicization at the CIA to three past periods: the debate over the Vietnam War, the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the George...

July was a bad month for Jack Smith. He was stripped of his special counsel title by a federal judge in Florida, and he lost 6-3 in the Supreme Court on the critical issue of presidential immunity. Despite the setbacks, he just took another shot at former President Donald Trump in the hopes of bringing him down before the November election. Many likely assumed the case was dead, considering the legal drubbing Mr. Smith just received. But this determined prosecutor moved back to the United States from The Hague for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of sending a Republican candidate to jail....

[Catholic Caucus] African archbishop: Opposition to homosexuality is not ‘cultural’ but about fidelity to Christ‘Africa was not defending a cultural idea. Africa was defending the teaching that the Church has had for 2,000 years,’ Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon said about opposition to homosexual ‘blessings.’In an apparent rebuke of Pope Francis, the president of the Cameroon Episcopal Conference reiterated that African clerical resistance to “female deacons” and LGBT ideology is not based on the continent’s conservative cultural outlook but rather on “fidelity to what Christ taught.” “Africa was not defending a cultural idea. Africa was defending the teaching that...

Olena Semykina, the owner of a village shop in east Ukraine, voted for President Volodymyr Zelensky five and a half years ago, hoping the fresh-faced political newcomer would end the fighting unleashed by Russian proxy forces in 2014.The screech of an artillery shell over her leafy village in the war-battered Donetsk region and the plumes of dark smoke billowing on the horizon suggested that her hopes for his first term had fallen short."We expected the war to end, like he promised. But the war hasn't ended. There's even more fighting. It seems to me that it's become even more intense,"...

After rewriting Title IX regulations to include protections for gender identity, President Biden told trans students: “We see you.” When he announced in April his latest executive actions to waive student loan debt, he proudly proclaimed that “this relief can be life-changing.” And standing in front of a group of immigrant advocates in June, Mr. Biden boasted that he had used the power of his presidency to provide a new path to legal status for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens — ending fear and uncertainty for a half-million people. “We can fix that,” Mr. Biden said. “And that’s what I’m...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday announced a $3 billion deal to buy 12 French warplanes, in a move that shifts his country away from its dependence on Russian arms. The announcement about the Rafale multi-purpose fighter jets was made during a joint news conference in Belgrade with French President Emmanuel Macron during a two-day visit to Serbia as part of what French officials have called a strategy of bringing Serbia closer to the European Union.