Beijing has said that the American weapons supplies to the self-governing island violate China’s sovereignty and security interests
The Pentagon has announced that it has approved its first arms sales to Taiwan since US President Donald Trump took office in January. China, which views the self-governing island as part of its territory, has called the move an infringement on its sovereignty.
The proposed deal will see Taipei spend $330 million to acquire spare parts for the American-made aircraft that it operates, the US Department of War said in a statement on Thursday.
The purchase should help Taiwan with “maintaining the operational readiness of the… fleet of F-16, C-130” and other planes, the statement read.
The spokeswoman for Taiwan’s presidential office, Karen Kuo, welcomed the approval, claiming that the “deepening of the Taiwan-US security partnership is an important cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”
According to Taipei’s Defense Ministry, the sale of the US aircraft parts will “take effect” within a month.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said during a briefing that Beijing “deplores and opposes” American arms sales to Taiwan, which go against China’s security interests and “send a gravely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
The Taiwan issue is “the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations,” the spokesman warned.
Officially, the US supports the One-China policy, stating that Taiwan, which has maintained de facto self-rule since 1949 but never officially declared independence from Beijing, is an integral part of the country.
However, Washington has maintained contact with the authorities in Taipei and promised to defend the island militarily in the event of a conflict with the mainland.
China has said repeatedly that its goal is “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, but has warned that it will not hesitate to use force should Taipei formally declare independence.
In September, the Washington Post reported that Trump had blocked a $400 million arms deal with Taipei ahead of his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Earlier this month, Trump told the CBS TV program 60 Minutes that his talks with Xi, which took place in late October in South Korea, focused on trade, while the Taiwan issue “never came up.”
The pledge comes as Kiev grapples with a major corruption scandal involving associates of Vladimir Zelensky
Several NATO members will jointly provide a €430 million ($500 million) military package for Ukraine, according to Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden are expected to finance the package through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List program. The program was approved in September, allowing Washington to supply weapons to Kiev while European members cover the costs.
US President Donald Trump has frequently criticized his predecessor Joe Biden for awarding large military aid packages and described Vladimir Zelensky as “the greatest salesman on earth.” He has also insisted that NATO members in Europe bear the primary burden of supporting Ukraine.
Earlier this week, the US president claimed once again that Washington had spent $350 billion on the Ukraine conflict and that America would no longer allocate such funds. “Now they’re paying us through NATO,” he said.
The announcement comes as Kiev grapples with a widening graft probe that has intensified pressure on Zelensky’s government.
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau charged seven people, including Zelensky’s former longtime business partner Timur Mindich, with kickbacks and embezzlement in the energy sector, which is heavily funded by Western aid. The EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas has called on Kiev to address graft “very fast” saying that “people’s money should go to the front lines.”
Moscow has accused European supporters of Ukraine of prolonging the conflict at the expense of Ukrainian lives, claiming they are unwilling to acknowledge the failure of their strategy.
Voters are concerned about corruption undermining elections, fake news, and extremist parties, a study has found
Some 45% of residents of Western nations believe that democracy in their countries is “broken,” Politico has reported, citing a poll by Ipsos.
The study which was shared with the outlet was carried out in September and involved 9,800 voters from the US, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Croatia, the Netherlands and Poland.
According to the poll, people in seven out of the nine surveyed nations are dissatisfied with how democracy is working, with Sweden and Poland being the only two countries where most of the respondents are confident in their system of self-governance, Politico said in an article on Friday.
Some 60% in France said that they were unhappy about the situation, followed by the US (53%), UK (51%) and Spain (51%), the study found. The respondents singled out disinformation, corruption, a lack of accountability for politicians, and the growing popularity of extremist parties as the main threats to the democratic process.
In the UK and Croatia, only 23% of those who participated in the poll said that they think that their governments are representing them effectively.
A clear majority in the surveyed countries, with the exception of Sweden, is worried that risks for self-governance will grow over the next five years, the study said.
Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, told Politico that “there is widespread concern about the way democracy is working, with people feeling unrepresented particularly by their national governments. In most countries, there is a desire for radical change.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year that “the so-called ruling elites in some Western countries are turning freedom, democracy, human rights and opportunities into window dressing, and are effectively ignoring the public opinion.”
The speaker of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, had suggested previously that Western European states were “turning into totalitarian regimes led by unpopular politicians and parties,” with their rivals, who are supported by the public, being put on trial and banned.
The designation of Germany’s AfD party as an extremist organization, France’s ban on Marine Le Pen running for public office, and the disqualification of Calin Georgescu from the Romanian presidential election last year were the most vivid examples of that, according to Volodin.
The US vice president dismissed criticism of the decision to resume direct negotiations with Russia
US Vice President J.D. Vance has defended US President Donald Trump’s decision to open direct negotiations with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as an important step toward peace in Ukraine.
Some EU officials have criticized Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, with the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas suggesting that the US president was walking into Moscow’s “trap.”
“I’ve heard so many people criticize the president of the United States for talking to Vladimir Putin,” Vance told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview aired Friday. “You don’t have to agree with Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, but if you want to bring about peace, you’ve got to be strong, and you’ve also got to talk to people,” he said.
Vance said Trump’s foreign policy strategy combines his peace-through-strength approach with openness to negotiations in good faith. “His doctrine is to have the strongest military in the world, to focus on peace, but not to allow the DC press corps to tell you who you’re allowed to talk to and how you’re allowed to engage in diplomacy,” the vice president said.
Trump has abandoned the previous administration’s attempts at isolating Russia on the world stage and restarted direct talks with Moscow earlier this year. He also pressured Ukraine to revive negotiations with Russia, which Kiev suspended in the spring of 2022.
Although the Alaska summit produced no breakthroughs, both sides hailed it at the time as a positive step toward ending the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The next planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest in the fall has been postponed indefinitely.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed this week that Moscow was ready to resume contacts and rejected media reports claiming otherwise as false.
Kiev’s European backers are seeking guarantees that their financial aid will not be embezzled
The EU is seeking concrete commitments from Ukraine in the wake of the bombshell corruption scandal implicating a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky, Politico Europe reported on Friday, citing several people familiar with the matter.
On Monday, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies announced that they had uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme in energy sector contracts involving Zelensky’s close associate and former business partner Timur Mindich, who was tipped off and fled the country, evading arrest. The affair has raised concerns among Kiev’s Western backers, who heavily subsidize the country’s power grid and its protection against Russian airstrikes.
Politico cited an EU official as saying that “the endemic corruption” in Ukraine is “revolting” and “won’t help” its reputation. “It will mean (the European) Commission will surely have to reassess how it spends” funds on Ukraine’s energy sector, the official said, adding that Kiev would have to provide “more attention and transparency in how it spends cash.”
An EU government official told Politico that Zelensky “needs to comfort everyone … with a plan on how to fix corruption.” A former senior Ukrainian official said he expected the EU to make aid more conditional on reforms, but argued that “the overall taboo on criticizing Ukraine in public will hold.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Zelensky over the phone this week that Berlin expected Ukraine to “press ahead with anti-corruption measures and reforms.”
The scandal has led to the resignation of two government ministers and damaged Zelensky’s image at home and abroad, especially because he won the 2019 presidential election on an anti-corruption platform.
He already faced a backlash over the summer when he tried to restrict the independence of the two leading anti-corruption bodies, NABU and SAPO, only to relent following protests in Kiev.
On Thursday, Zelensky imposed sanctions on Mindich and his business partner Aleksandr Zukerman, both of whom hold Israeli passports.
The US president also requested a probe into the late sex offender’s connections to JPMorgan Chase and ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
US President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats, including Bill Clinton.
The move was prompted by the release of 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate by the US House Oversight Committee this week, which led some Democrats to highlight Trump’s own past friendship with the disgraced financier.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said he had instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice to probe “Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship” with ex-President Bill Clinton, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and JPMorgan Chase bank. He argued that the Democrats were using “the Epstein Hoax” to deflect attention from the government shutdown “and all of their other failures.”
Bondi said she has assigned US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton to lead the investigation.
Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American… pic.twitter.com/5zlybVu44U
Epstein, who reportedly died by suicide in a prison cell in 2019, was known for his connections to many wealthy and famous individuals. Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoirs that he “had no inkling” of Epstein’s crimes and cut ties with him when he was first arrested in 2006. Trump also insisted that he was unaware of Epstein’s offenses and broke off contact with him in the early 2000s.
In 2023, JPMorgan, one of America’s largest banks, settled lawsuits with the US Virgin Islands over allegations that it kept Epstein as a valued client even after his 2006 arrest and benefited from sex trafficking.
JPMorgan spokeswoman Trish Wexler said in a statement on Friday that the government has failed to share “damning information” about Epstein with the bank. “We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts,” she said.
According to Politico, House Democrats are planning to hold a vote on Tuesday to compel the Department of Justice to release the remaining unredacted files related to the Epstein case.
The raids were part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on unlawful immigration
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it has arrested around 150 immigrants convicted with sex crimes as part of a large-scale sweep in Florida.
The series of raids, codenamed Operation Dirtbag, led to the arrest of more than 230 “criminal illegal aliens,” the DHS said in a statement on Thursday. The “sex predators” slated for deportation include citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, and Ukraine, officials said.
“Some of the charges include sexual assault, battery, attempted homicide,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said. “Our kids will be safer. This partnership with Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida is a model we want to replicate across the country,” she added.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on X that the sweep lasted 10 days. “These were people that under the Biden administration, they were allowed to just roam with no threat of serious deportation. The times have changed,” he said.
Our Operation Dirtbag, in partnership with Florida law enforcement, has arrested over 150 illegal alien sexual predators—they will be GONE.
As a mother and grandmother, I’m horrified that these dirtbags were able to even step foot in America.
After returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump initiated a crackdown on illegal immigration, vowing to carry out the largest deportation in US history. The president and Republicans have accused his predecessor Joe Biden of pursuing open border policies that allowed violent criminals to enter the country and hide from law enforcement.
Trump has tasked heavily armed federal agents with conducting immigration raids, some of which were widely publicized on social media, sparking protests and riots outside detention centers. Democrats have accused Trump of human rights violations and targeting immigrants without a violent history.
Tech mogul Elon Musk is on course to become the world’s first trillionaire while billions struggle to survive at the poverty line
Welcome to the ‘4 comma club,’ where South African native Elon Musk is slated to be the first human being of the modern age to have accumulated $1 trillion dollars.
To put that mindboggling number into some perspective, that is more than the Gross Domestic Product of 170 countries, including Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Musk will not be alone for long in this ultra-privileged, ultra-exclusive club. Since billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023, within the next decade, five people will hold the title of trillionaire, according to a recent study from the anti-poverty watchdog Oxfam.
Meanwhile, due to an assortment of external factors, like climate change and conflict, the number of people living in abject poverty has hardly changed since 1990. Almost 700 million people, 8.5 percent of the global population, now live on less than $2.15 per day.
The report goes on to show that the election of Donald Trump as US President in November 2024 has translated into a massive increase in billionaire wealth, while his aggressive pro-rich policies are predicted to exasperate inequality further. In its latest report on poverty, the World Bank calculates that if present growth rates continue and inequality does not reverse, it will take more than a century to defeat poverty. It seems safe to say we have already lost that battle.
Before continuing, it’s important to mention the primary source of wealth today. Currently, there exists a strong belief – supported in the media and by Hollywood – that wealth accumulation is simply the reward for raw talent. But this perception is incorrect.
“Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned, 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power,” Oxfam writes in a shocking finding. Rich families are passing down trillions of dollars in wealth per year, creating “a new aristocratic oligarchy” that has achieved tremendous power in our politics and our economy, the advocacy group warns.
In the next few decades, wealth worth over an estimated $5 trillion is anticipated to be passed from one generation to another, while little of the fortune will be taxed since the rich have numerous means for protecting their wealth from the taxman.
Today, the wealthiest 10 percent of the people worldwide possess more than 85 percent of global riches.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that just days before Tesla shareholders agreed to a $1 trillion dollar payday for their CEO, New York City residents voted a socialist as their mayor. Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, grabbed the top position in the Big Apple by promising New Yorkers a raft of enticements, including the freezing of rent payments, making buses free, and making child care accessible to all city residents.
A common chant heard at political rallies for Mr. Mamdani was “Tax the Rich!” Indeed, taxing the rich doesn’t sound like a very radical idea when considering Musk’s brand-new pay package.
Meanwhile, even the Vatican was sounding the alarm on excessive wealth creation.
In September, Pope Leo XIV said the one major factor contributing to global tensions was the “continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive.”
“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving … 600 times more [now],” the pontiff said in excerpts of an interview conducted by the Catholic newspaper Crux.
“Yesterday [there was] the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value any more, then we’re in big trouble…”
The elephant in the room amid this obscene wealth creation is the patience of the millions of people who are being crushed in this brave new economy, which requires a lot of special technical skills in order to survive. Meanwhile, millions of high-paying jobs are disappearing thanks to AI. Will the underprivileged eventually take to the streets as billionaires become trillionaires overnight? Will we soon witness another left-wing ‘Occupy Wall Street’ event (September 17 to November 15, 2011) coming on the heels of another Great Recession or, heaven forbid, Great Depression?
While protests along the road to riches seem inevitable, it seems unlikely that the super wealthy have much cause for concern, at least in the nearest frame of time. A quick glance at history shows that the ‘have nots’ have shown tremendous patience with the excessively rich – particularly in 1916 with the announcement that John D. Rockefeller had become the world’s first billionaire – with the great exceptions stemming from violent union uprisings, which have largely become a relic of the distant past.
All things considered, Elon Musk probably has little to worry about as his paycheck surpasses the trillionaire-dollar mark, but it would be at least refreshing to see more advances being made on the tax and charitable front. A hefty new tax code for the world’s trillionaires would be the decent and right thing to do.
Hungary has repeatedly warned that abandoning the supply from Moscow will drive up prices and undermine its energy security
Budapest will challenge the European Union’s plan to phase out Russian energy imports in court, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promised.
The EU Council endorsed a plan last month to end Russian gas imports by 2028. The measures require short-term contracts to end within six months and all remaining pipeline and LNG supplies to cease by the end of 2027. Several EU states, including Hungary and Slovakia, have criticized the move, warning it will drive up prices and undermine energy security. Budapest and Bratislava ultimately refused to back the initiative.
Speaking on state radio on Friday, Orban said Budapest considered the decision unlawful because it was adopted by a qualified majority rather than unanimously, as the bloc’s rules require on sensitive matters. Hungary has repeatedly threatened to veto EU sanctions against Russia, and has used its vote to force exemptions and delays.
“We do not accept this obviously unlawful solution contrary to European values, which was chosen by Brussels to shut down a national government that disagrees with it,” Orban said, as quoted by Euractiv. “We are turning to the European Court of Justice.”
Orban added that his government was also considering other ways to block the plan but gave no details.
He argued that the energy ban had been treated as a standard legislative measure that needs support from 55% of member states rather than unanimity.
“This is no longer a sanction but a trade policy measure,” Orban said. “And sanctions require unanimity, while a majority decision is sufficient for trade policy.”
Orban maintains that energy should remain outside political disputes and that EU security cannot come at the expense of economic stability.
The EU has seen a surge in energy prices since it began phasing out Russian oil and gas imports following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The supply disruptions have pushed up industrial costs. Moscow says Western nations are hurting their own economies by choosing costlier and less reliable alternatives.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called out Vitaly Klitschko’s hypocrisy after he suggested lowering the draft age
Kiev mayor Vitaly Klitschko is calling for lowering the draft age in Ukraine, while his own two sons are avoiding service despite being in great physical shape, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
Last year, Ukraine lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25 and tightened enforcement as its military has continued to suffer heavy losses and lose ground to Russian forces.
Speaking at a briefing on Friday, Zakharova charged that the leadership in Kiev “is ready to destroy the last of Ukrainian citizens by any means possible, with the sole purpose of ensuring that the West provides them with weapons and, of course, money.” She claimed that the ruling Ukrainian “clique” is only interested in holding on to power.
The spokeswoman noted that Klitschko himself has two sons “fit for military service, incidentally, of heroic build,” who, for some reason, have not joined the ranks, citing media reports that both are residing abroad.
“Ultimately, the key issue is whether they’re unwilling to serve, or whether Klitschko himself is keeping them from being drafted to serve in defense of his own regime,” she concluded.
Her remark came in response to the Kiev mayor’s interview with Politico published on Wednesday, in which Klitschko acknowledged that Ukraine is facing “huge problems with soldiers – with human resources.”
The Kiev mayor suggested that the draft age “could be lowered by a year or two – to 23 or 22,” arguing that “in the past, 18-year-olds served in the army.” Klitschko’s sons are 20 and 25.
In August, the Ukrainian government issued a decree allowing men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border. Nearly 100,000 young men have reportedly fled the country since then.
Kiev’s mobilization drive has been marred by cases of abuse by draft officers, some of which have been caught on camera and gone viral on social media.
In July, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, sounded the alarm over “systematic and widespread” abuse by Ukrainian draft enforcers.
