Tag: Region Americas

LONDON — Defense spending is getting a £5 billion ($6 billion) boost from the British government, but most of the cash has been earmarked for nuclear programs and rebuilding depleted weapons stocks rather than addressing wider capability gaps in the armed forces.

The funding figures, released Sunday night, will be contained in a refresh of the 2021 integrated defense and security review due to be published later today.

News of the increase came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak headed off to San Diego, California, for a meeting Mar. 13 with U.S. President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to announce details of the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact agreed by the three nations.

Economists see Lehman Brothers-style crisis as unlikely despite jitters following collapse of California-based lender.

Refusing to let Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky address the Academy Awards ceremony while handing an Oscar to a documentary about Russian activist Alexey Navalny means politics and movies do mix after all, adviser Mikhail Podoliak tweeted on Monday. “If Oscar is outside of politics how should we understand the documentary manifesto Navalny where internal Russian politics is overflowing?”

The International Criminal Court is expected to seek the arrest of Russian officials for forcibly deporting children from Ukraine and targeting civilian infrastructure, a source said on Monday, in what would be the first international war crimes cases arising from Moscow’s invasion.

The source said the arrest warrants could include the crime of genocide, and were expected to arrive in the “short term” if the court prosecutor’s request was approved by a pre-trial judge at the Hague-based court. It was unclear which Russian officials the prosecutor might seek warrants against.

The office of the prosecutor at the ICC declined to comment.

Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Moscow would be certain to reject any arrest warrants against any of its officials. But an international war crimes prosecution could deepen Moscow’s diplomatic isolation and make it difficult for those accused to travel abroad.
The source said the arrest warrants could include the crime of genocide, and were expected to arrive in the “short term” if the court prosecutor’s request was approved by a pre-trial judge at the Hague-based court. It was unclear which Russian officials the prosecutor might seek warrants against.

An analysis by Global Affairs Canada argues that Saudi Arabia is the “principal guarantor” of affordable oil for Western countries, as well as an important market for Canadian companies, The Breach reported on Monday, citing the seven-page document. Canadian weapons are crucial to maintaining Riyadh as an “integral and valued security partner,” the report claimed.  The analysis stands in contrast to Trudeau’s statements suggesting that he would like to cancel a CAN$14.8 billion ($10.8 billion) contract to export military vehicles…

Defense spending this year must focus on the blockade threat, earmarking funds to stockpile spare parts for F-16 fighter jets and other weaponry, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said on Monday, in a report seeking parliamentary budget approval. Since last year, the ministry has been reviewing its strategic fuel reserves and its capacity to repair equipment, said Reuters, which obtained a copy of the report.

The Taiwanese military will also need to replenish its stores of artillery shells and rockets “to strengthen combat continuity,” the ministry said. China’s military has been conducting joint force operations “with an eye to controlling strategic choke points and denying access to foreign forces.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is allowing thousands of Ukrainians who fled their homeland when Russia invaded a year ago to stay in the United States longer, the administration said Monday. The decision provides relief to Ukrainians whose one-year authorization to remain in the U.S. was set to expire soon.

The Homeland Security Department said the extension is for certain Ukrainian nationals and their immediate family members who were let into the U.S. before the Uniting for Ukraine program started.

The Army’s end strength continues to decrease under its most recent budget request.

The service unveiled its part of President Joe Biden’s overall defense budget request to Congress today.

The Army is asking to fund an Army with 452,000 active duty soldiers, 325,000 soldiers in the Army National Guard and 174,000 soldiers in the Army Reserve.

That’s a drop of 21,000 soldiers from the active rosters as compared to last year’s initial request for 473,000 active troops.

According to Andrew Adams, the group has focused on identifying those who are helping Russians to avoid sanctions and export controls. “I think it can be quite effective to be sanctioning facilitators,” Adams said, calling them “professional sanctions evasion brokers.” A recent report from the Treasury Department showed that more than $58 billion worth of sanctioned Russian assets have been blocked or frozen worldwide so far. Adams pointed out that KleptoCapture aims to sell the frozen yachts and other property of sanctioned Russians, despite the legal difficulties, and use the proceeds for the benefit of Ukraine. He noted, however, that this would be done in accordance with the law.

The pharmaceutical giant says it will pay $229 in cash for each share of Seagen.

Biden administration officials are pressing their Canadian counterparts to make a decision on whether Ottawa will lead a multinational force into Haiti to assist the crisis-racked Caribbean nation in its battle against gang control, U.S. and diplomatic sources said. They are hoping that a visit to Canada by President Joe Biden next week will settle months of debate over the matter. In October, the United States proposed a resolution at the United Nations Security Council — with the support of…

Panel says the UN, the Syrian government and others are responsible for delays in getting emergency aid to Syrians.

Did China interfere in Canada’s elections? We don’t know. But journalists must not rely on friendly leaks for the truth.

“What we’re facing right now is really serious,” Pomboy, founder of economic research firm MacroMavens, said on Friday in a Fox News interview. “We are on the brink of a 2008-style financial crisis.”

Pomboy made her assessment in the wake of Friday’s shutdown of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) by federal regulators – the second-largest failure in US banking history. SVB’s collapse came on the heels of this week’s closure of cryptocurrency lender Silvergate Bank, as well as the bankruptcies last fall of crypto firms FTX, BlockFi, and Three Arrows Capital.

President Joe Biden’s administration has responded by trying to allay concerns over a broader crisis. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement on Friday declaring that the US banking system “remains resilient, and regulators have effective tools to address this type of event.”

The ban will be imposed next week and reevaluated after six months, De Croo said in a statement. Government employees will be allowed to use the app on their personal devices, but not on any devices “whose purchase, subscription or use are partly or fully paid for by the federal government.” Citing reports by the Belgian State Security Service and Centre for Cybersecurity, De Croo claimed that TikTok collects large amounts of user data, manipulates the information users are exposed to, and cooperates with Chinese spy agencies. “We must not be naive,” De Croo said. “TikTok is a Chinese company that today is obliged to cooperate with the Chinese intelligence services.”

The verdict follows Ng’s initial conviction back in April last year, when he was found guilty of helping Tim Leissner, his former boss at Goldman Sachs, drain money from the fund. Goldman Sachs helped 1MDB, a fund set up in 2009 to finance development projects in Malaysia, raise $6.5 billion through bond sales back in 2012 and 2013. According to US prosecutors, some $4.5 billion of these funds were diverted by Ng and his co-conspirators in the process. They were then used for bribes to government officials, purchases of high-end real estate and other luxury items. According to the Department of Justice, some of the money even went to finance the 2013 Leonardo DiCaprio film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, which is itself a story of defrauding and money laundering. According to US District Judge Margo Brodie, Ng and his co-defendants “effectively stole money” that was supposed to go toward infrastructure and economic development projects in Malaysia. “There is a critical need to deter crimes of pure greed like this one,” Brodie said, commenting on the sentence. Ng pleaded not guilty and said that the $35 million he was accused of getting in payments from the embezzlement scheme were in fact a return on his wife’s investment. The former banker plans to file an appeal.