CIA Director William Burns enters the building of the Kosovar presidency on 22 August.
CIA Director William Burns arrived in Kosovo after stops earlier this week in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia on an unannounced trip amid concerns about US relations with Kosovo and Russian influence in the Balkans.
Burns traveled from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia before arriving in Kosovo. According to the flight-tracking website Flightradar24, a US military plane believed to be used to fly the CIA chief made stops in those countries. On 22 August, the aircraft was seen parked at the VIP gate at Pristina’s international airport.
D/CIA Burns’ visit to Kosovo follows concerns about the partnership between the US and Kosovo, especially regarding the government’s handling of issues related to the country’s Serb minority.
Since 2001, the US has provided Kosovo with $97,830,378 in foreign assistance.
Sources:
CIA Chief Makes Stop In Kosovo As Part Of Unannounced Visit To Balkan Region (rferl.org)
U.S. Foreign Assistance by Country
Mass Bomb Threat E-Mailed to Dozens of Jewish Institutions Across Canada
Canada’s oldest synagogue Temple Emmanu-el, c1900 (Photo: Courtesy of Congregation Emanu-El, Victoria, BC)
Multiple synagogues, Jewish community centers, and hospitals in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa were targeted with an emailed bomb threat early Wednesday morning. In response to the threat, Toronto Police evacuated buildings near an intersection in a heavily Jewish neighborhood.
A Jewish organization reported the threat was not credible, though it is still being investigated by Toronto, Montreal, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). This incident comes just a few months after shots were fired at a Chabad-Lubavitch girls’ school in Toronto. Soon afterward, a synagogue in Vancouver was attacked. In November, shots were fired at two Orthodox Jewish day schools in Montreal. No injuries were reported in any of the attacks.
A representative from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs stated “all indications point to these threats being nuisance emails designed to disrupt lives. There is no imminent threat.”
Likud Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, a man indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and his policies towards the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is stoking antisemitism worldwide. Nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since October 2023. The US Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that 190 of the 312 antisemitic incidents from 7 Oct 2023 to 23 Oct 2023 were directly linked to the war in Israel and Gaza.
Sources:
How the Gaza crisis is stoking antisemitism across the U.S. (nbcnews.com)
ICC statement on arrest warrants of Israeli and Hamas leaders (bbc.com)
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential – The Lancet
More Americans Unwilling to Die for Other Countries
A July poll shows that a majority of the American public does not support sending US soldiers to defend Taiwan or Ukraine, suggesting that Americans appear to be warming to restraint and non-interventionism in international affairs.
Another poll found that a majority of Americans (56%) do not believe that the US should pick a side in Israel’s war on Gaza. Another recent survey found that just 4 in 10 support the US sending soldiers to defend Israel if attacked by its neighbors.
Notably, the US recently deployed two aircraft carrier groups and a nuclear-powered submarine armed with 154 Tomahawk missiles to the Middle East. Israel is expecting an Iranian counterattack for its continuous airstrikes on Shia targets in Lebanon and Syria, as well as the 31 July assassination of Palestinian resistance leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
After the 11 Sep attacks against the US in 2001, the media helped to normalize the idea of deposing Saddam Hussein. By January 2002, 73% of the American public supported the use of force in Iraq, believing the Bush administration falsehoods about WMDs in Saddam’s hands. After years of hindsight, only 32% of Americans considered the Iraq War the right thing to do according to a 2024 survey.
Sources:
More Americans Unwilling to Die for Other Countries – Truthdig
American Drug Firms Accused of Unethical Clinical Trials in Uyghur Region of China
Since 2017, the Chinese government has been operating a vast detention and “sinicization” program, focused on eliminating Uyghur life and culture.
American pharmaceutical companies are carrying out drug trials in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, where the US says a genocide of the Uyghur population is taking place. In a letter to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the two top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party requested an explanation of the practice, which they said is recorded in “hundreds” of entries on the FDA website “clinicaltrials.gov.”
In the letter, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) questioned “the ethics of conducting these trials in Xinjiang,” where they said Chinese officials “force ethnic minorities … to participate in gruesome medical procedures, which likely overlap with FDA-approved research.”
Given that China does not allow independent evaluators to examine facilities in Xinjiang for rights violations, there was reason to query if Uyghurs were being forced to undergo medical testing. The involvement of China’s People’s Liberation Army, they added, also raised “serious concerns” that the intellectual property of U.S.-based companies had been compromised and “co-opted” by Chinese firms.
Even precious metals have not been untouched, with a report last year accusing US brands of links to gold being mined through slavery.
In 2021, the US government declared that a genocide was taking place against the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority in China, after years of mounting evidence about mass internment camps, torture, forced labor and forced sterilization taking place in Xinjiang.
Sources:
American drug firms accused of clinical trials in Uyghur region — Radio Free Asia (rfa.org)
https://www.glanlaw.org/copy-of-uyghur-forced-labour
INTERVIEW: ‘There’s exposure across Wall Street’
Report: US brands linked to Uyghur-mined gold
US imported cars tied to Uyghur slave labor, Senate report says
Vladimir Putin Humiliated as Hackers Take Over Russian State TV
Getty/X
Hackers from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) broke into servers of several Russian television channels and broadcasted “objective videos about the war in Ukraine.” HUR‘s footage was displayed three times on prime-time TV channels: Pervouralsk TV, Eurasia 360, Eurasia Pervyi Kanal, and others.
The targeted channels further reportedly included Lugansk 24, Pervyi Respublikanskyi, SpB, Oplot, TV-3, and Pervyi Rosiyskyi. Some of the channels belong to Russian oligarch Andrey Komarov. The nine channels had to suspend their broadcasting as a result of the hack.
The TV company Pervouralsk issued an apology on the VKontakte social network, saying that unspecified “attackers gained access to the live broadcast and launched unauthorized video materials that contradict the TV channel’s policy.”
This comes on the heels of Ukraine’s successful offensive into Russia and the largest drone attack against Moscow to date.
Source:
Ukrainian hackers show war footage on Russian TV, source says (kyivindependent.com)
Haiti: Suspect in Killings of US Missionary Couple and Nonprofit Director Arrested
A funeral procession for mission director Judes Montis, killed by gangs alongside two of his US missionary members, makes its way to the cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 28 May 2024. (Imagery: Odelyn Joseph / AP)
Police in Haiti have arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a US missionary couple and a Haitian man who headed a nonprofit organization in May. The 23 May murders of missionaries Davy Lloyd and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, and Jude Montis, the country’s director for Missions in Haiti Inc., was blamed on gangs rampaging across Haiti’s capital and beyond.
A video posted on social media late Wednesday by Haiti’s National Police shows a 52-year-old man in handcuffs, accused of being involved in the killings of the Lloyds and Montis. Police allege the suspect’s phone was used to make calls after the killings, but the man rejected that accusation.
The young couple — Davy was 23 and Natalie just 21 — were supposed to celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary in June.
From January to May, more than 3,200 killings were reported across Haiti, with gang violence leaving more than half a million people homeless. In February, gangs launched coordinated attacks on key government infrastructure, raided police stations and opened fire at the main international airport, forcing it to shut down for nearly three months. Gunmen also stormed into Haiti’s two biggest prisons, freeing thousands of inmates.
A U.N.-backed police force from Kenya arrived in June to lead a multinational mission, nearly two years after Haiti’s government requested urgent deployment of a foreign force.
Source:
Suspect in killings of U.S. missionary couple and nonprofit chief arrested in Haiti – CBS News
Deadly Floods Leave Millions Stranded in Bangladesh
The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) reports with the rains continuing, water levels could rise further, raising concerns about additional flooding and displacement. [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP]
At least 13 people have been killed and 4.5 million affected by floods triggered by heavy rains in eastern Bangladesh. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, fever, skin infections, and other waterborne diseases are increasing amongst the displaced. An estimated 100,000 Bangladeshis already suffer from cholera which will no doubt increase with these floods.
Floods triggered by torrential rains have swamped swaths of low-lying Bangladesh and rescuers are scrambling to evacuate flooded communities. Nearly 190,000 people were taken to emergency relief shelters and 11 of the country’s 64 districts were affected by the flooding.
The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades and is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters and climate change.
Sources:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/8/23/deadly-floods-leave-millions-stranded-in-bangladesh
Coriolanus 