news

I guess is sending Mirage 2000s now? I haven’t heard a single thing about F16s since that one crashed early on.

a difficult event in the hague

A record number of poverty-stricken Danish families has applied for financial aid for the upcoming holiday season from private humanitarian organisations this year. The charity Blue Cross reports having received 15.5 percent more applications compared to last year for their donations of USD 100 gift certificates to supermarket chain Lidl.

The cost of living crisis hits hardest among the poorest whose already meagre pensions and benefits are not being adjusted sufficiently.

• Source: DR (state media)

random stuff pulled out from the Polish osint guy's last interview from Friday:

• The Yuzhmash factory in Dnepropetrovsk had around 40k employees during the late USSR years, it made ballistic missiles but also other stuff like trolleybuses. It kept producing and servicing stuff for the Russian army like the R-36M ICBMs. After the 2014 coup in Ukraine it lost 80% of its business. In 2018 it had around 7k contract workers left and it has been making ballistic missiles like the Hrim-2 for the Ukrainian army, so it makes sense it would be a strike target for Russia.

• He suspects the Russians notified the west about a return strike when the embassies started closing and not 30 mins before the strike like Peskov said.

• Pro-Ukrainian propaganda is saying the Oreshnik strike is no big deal actually because 'Russia only has a few of these missiles' and also the 'US is going to reverse engineer it from the scraps at Yuzhmash'. Dnepropetrovsk has at least one Patriot system, which failed to intercept it.

• He thinks the new missile is called Oreshnik because it looks like a hazel flower when it comes down.

• In his short address Putin said Russia reserves the right to attack objects belonging to countries that have shared weapons with Ukraine which were used for attacks on Russian territory. Since he said 'objects' and not 'territory' that could for example mean submarine strikes on UK/French military bases in the Caribean sea or in Africa.

• Some pro-Ukrainian analysts say one Zircon missile got shot down over Kyiv, but he's not convinced.

• Ukraine has Patriot-Fs (newer model) because one was identified after kinetically intercepting an Iskander-M over Odessa and falling down.

• There's a bit about the Russian nuclear doctrine update but it's long enough for another post. The previous version's language was more precise and listed a range of specific scenarios, the new one is much more loose about the qualifying circumstances. Russian military bases abroad and military ships are covered now. Belarusian territory is mentioned now.

Felix mentioned on a recent Matt-Shaped Hole episode that the median age of a home buyer in the United States is now 56, so I went to look it up and it's true, up from 49 in only one year:

The ages of home buyers reached all-time highs. The median buyer age increased to a peak of 56 years old, up from 49 last year. The median first-time buyer age increased to 38 years old this year from 35 last year, while the typical repeat buyer age also increased to 61 years from 58 last year

from the NAR report linked at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buying-a-house-first-time-homebuyer/

Any news from the Lebanon front?

Venezuela Sets ‘Committee for Justice for the Victims of Fascism in July 2024’ - Telesur English

Russia vetoes Sudan ceasefire resolution put forward by the UK

Russia was the only member of the 15-member council to vote against the measure on Monday morning, in a move that British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said was “mean, nasty and cynical”.

In an address to the Security Council after the vote, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN said that Moscow agreed “that the conflict in Sudan requires a swift resolution” and that “the only way to achieve this is for the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire”.

But Dmitry Polyanskiy said that while the Security Council’s role is to help the warring parties achieve that, it “should not be done by imposing upon the Sudanese, through a council decision, the opinion of its individual members”.

He accused the UK and Sierra Leone of “double standards”, pointing to Britain’s support of Israel’s ongoing humanitarian violations in its war in Gaza, and said Lammy’s criticism was an “excellent demonstration of British neo-colonialism”.

“It is shocking that Russia has vetoed an effort to save lives – though perhaps, it shouldn’t be,” Thomas-Greenfield said on Monday after the Security Council vote. “They claim it is because of Sudanese sovereignty. But Sudan supports the resolution.”

Isn't this a terrible look? Though I doubt a UN resolution alone would change much.