Zelensky To UN: Russia’s Deficit ‘Bigger Than Any Other Year’ – More Sanctions Needed
Among the more interesting parts of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday afternoon was when he lashed out at North Korea.
Zelensky said while issuing leveling a litany of charges against Russia for its war that “The leader of North Korea sent his troops to Russia to support the weak points of the Russian army.“
via Associated Press
He questioned why a faraway southeast Asian country would be so willing to sacrifice its troops for a Russian endeavor.
Zelensky said: “You probably saw the broadcast from Pyongyang when they honored those who were killed. And this is madness, too. Why should Koreans give their lives in a war against Ukraine?“
He further accused Kim Jong Un of using his own citizens “like currency” in return for “improved ballistic missiles and Pyongyang’s much [upgraded] drone capabilities.” Likely these barbs will only cause Kim’s regime to double down, and keep up its military support to Moscow.
By some estimates, hundreds or possibly even thousands of DPRK troops have died so far in the Ukraine conflict. Pyongyang and Moscow have increasingly openly acknowledged the deaths, with North Korea even having held patriotic state funerals for slain troops.
Elsewhere in the address, Zelensky sought to portray his country as essentially ‘winning’ the war, claiming immense but unverifiable Russian losses on the battlefield, also while Ukraine’s long-range drones unleash destruction on Russian energy infrastructure.
Zelensky:
Just this year, from January through August, the Russian army lost 248,964 people on the battlefield in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/luHxIwp2Au
Concerning the energy war, Zelensky went on to assert that “Oil itself is not Ukraine’s target, not our target, not gasoline or diesel, not factories or ports … Our target is Russia’s ability to finance this war, to drag it out, to make it more brutal and more destructive.”
“Russia’s finances and Russia’s production are what must be stopped if Putin is to be stopped,” Zelensky added. On this front, he presented Ukraine’s risky long-range strikes as victorious. But he has also this week expressed willingness to agree to a joint energy ceasefire.
On sanctions, he pointed to Russia’s budget deficit as now being “bigger than in any other year” – claiming that “Russia planned major operations on the front this summer; all of them failed.”
Zelenskyy at the UN: “Ukrainians understand that this winter could be very harsh for us, but in response we will have no choice but to make it harsh for Russia too” pic.twitter.com/xAOZvFgRro
Zelensky also used the speech to try and rally Western countries to not grow weak on punishing Russia and keeping its global isolation in place.
“Something always seems to stop Putin from saying, ‘That’s it. Enough, Peace,’” Zelensky said. “Can you even imagine him without war? He is ‘Patient Zero’, the one from whom war keeps spreading further. … ‘Patient Zero’ must be stopped.”
He said Russian assets must “remain a target,” arguing that “when someone in the world weakens sanctions, weakens sanctions against Russian oligarchs, it may make life more comfortable for rich Russians, but it also gives Putin more time, to send his people into the kill zones.”
We’re about 40 days, close to 40 days, out of the midterm, and all of a sudden there’s been a melodramatic announcement that artificial intelligence could destroy the human race. I think everybody’s always accepted that remote possibility, and it’s been very popular in popular culture, such as “The Terminator” series. But why did all of a sudden we hear about it now?
And the answer is Jason Coxon, a minor figure that had worked in major AI companies, suddenly quit, and he announced that even the CEOs of those companies were worried that they were creating things that they couldn’t control, and that artificial intelligence would, on its own, be able to outthink humans and perhaps control the world, etc.
In “The End of Everything,” a book I mentioned, a theoretical experiment by the Pentagon, a computer simulation in which a missile was programmed to do anything that it could to protect itself to complete the mission. And when one of the programmers pushed the kill button, the missile turned on the computer screen. It wasn’t a real missile, but the simulated missile turned and went back at the person who pushed the button.
So, we’ve always known that that risk was there, but why was it so exaggerated right now? These CEOs, it was very interesting. If they’re so worried about the direction of research, why don’t they do two things? Why don’t they patrol, control, audit their own people?
It’s almost like saying, “I’m afraid that I’ll commit arson.” And if you’re afraid you’ll commit arson, then why don’t you take fuel away from that person or don’t ever touch gasoline? If you’re afraid that your company will make something that will destroy mankind, then don’t do it.
But if you say, “I still can’t control it,” then why are you opposing liability, legislation that says the makers of AI, should that AI product be used and be used to hurt people, they’re not liable? You would say, “What? Just make us liable. That’ll ensure that you can trust us because we might not trust ourselves.”
The other thing is they’ve called, and the Left has called, for international control. I’d like to say, if you look at the history of international control regulations, it’s not good.
The League of Nations, did that stop World War II? When Mussolini decided to go into East Africa, did they stop him from using the Suez Canal? Did they tell Japan, “You can’t go into Manchuria,” or to get out of China? Did they say to Hitler, “Don’t go into the Sudetenland”? They did. Did it do any good? No.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, remember that? That was going to be a worldwide, by Sen. [Frank] Kellogg in the United States in the 1920s, a worldwide effort to outlaw war. How did that work out? Within a decade and a half, we were at war.
How about the Washington Naval Treaty? That was a very inspired, idealistic idea after World War I: Let’s stop the dreadnought race. Everybody will agree to make no destroyer, cruiser, battleship over a certain tonnage. Did Japan or Germany abide by the 35,000-ton limit on battleships? No. Did we? Yes. Did Britain? Yes. Did France? Yes. Did Mussolini? No. Did, as I said, Germany? No. Did Japan?
In other words, consensual societies do abide by international treaties. Nonconsensual societies do not.
How about the Versailles Treaty? Did that prevent another war? No. How about the Munich Agreement between Prime Minister [Neville] Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler? Did he abide by that when he said: This is my last territorial conquest in Europe? No. He invaded Europe about a year later.
How about the recent Paris climate accord? Has that reduced Chinese carbon emissions? No. They’re building two to three coal plants per month.
How about the United Nations Human Rights Council? Has that stopped the slaughter of Christians in Africa? Did that stop the ethnic cleansing and killing of Armenians in Azerbaijan? No.
So, international accords won’t work.
So, what is going on with all this melodrama? Why now? Why on the eve of an election? It’s not new. Let’s look at some of the end-of-days scares that we’ve had in the past.
When I was younger, in 1968, there was the Nixon-Humphrey campaign, and all of a sudden Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford professor, said we’re all going to be destroyed by overpopulation. He took the old Thomas Malthus worry in the 19th century of overpopulation. He wrote a bestseller called “The Population Bomb,” and it said there’s no way we can get enough fuel, food, precious metals … to feed this growing billion-dollar, billion-person population bomb. We’re doomed.
And it had a lot of bad effects. People started just to have one child. In Europe, they took it very seriously. The idea was have one child, adopt one. And now Canada has a 1.25 fertility rate. Europe is about 1.33, the EU.
It had disastrous consequences, and we now – we have more people on the planet than ever, and the per capita income of the world population is higher than when Paul Ehrlich wrote that book.
In 1983, there was a nuclear winter.We were all scared. Carl Sagan, he was sort of like Paul Ehrlich, a professor. He was a cult figure. He said that we’re gonna have a nuclear exchange, and when we do, the nuclear dust will blot out the sun, and we’ll all die.
That was in relationship to the Soviets. For a long time, they had short-range missiles threatening Europe. Ronald Reagan said that’s not allowable, to bully Europe. We’re gonna put Pershing II missiles to counteract your missiles.
There were some standoffs, and all of a sudden – and what was gonna happen within a year? There was going to be the 1984 reelection effort of Reagan. So, all of a sudden, the Left said: Nuclear winter, nuclear winter, we’re all gonna be doomed.
Hollywood made a movie, “The Day After,” showing mushrooms dotting the Kansas landscape. A hundred thousand people. It was just a complete hysteria.
Then we had climate change, or rather global warming went to climate change.
In 1992, who wrote “Earth in the Balance”? Candidate Al Gore during that election cycle. What was his thesis? Well, there was global warming we were worried about, but he was saying that heat is a pollutant. Everybody’s dangerous or deadly as industrial waste or ozone or whatever.
And he said we have only a decade or a decade and a half, and the polar bears are going to die. The coral reefs off Australia are going to erode. Icebergs are going to melt in the Antarctic, and the Arctic Ocean is going to be too warm, and we’re going to have difficulty navigating these icebergs. The endless – you couldn’t get a place on the ocean. Barack Obama’s house in Hawaii, built, I guess, apparently, will be inundated.
And then it didn’t happen. Didn’t happen.
But Al Gore and [Bill] Clinton were elected.
In 2016, remember “Me Too”? Harvey Weinstein was using the old casting couch of Hollywood producers to coerce sex from actresses so they could get a role. It started out legitimately, as did climate change worries, as did nuclear bomb worries, as did AI worries.
But that didn’t last long. All of a sudden, careers as varied as Garrison Keillor, Brett Kavanaugh, Al Franken, the senator, everybody, if they did anything in their past, stole a kiss, patted someone too long, hugged somebody, half the country was worried over the last 30 years had they said an off-color joke. There was a climate of paranoia.
And it was right during the what? The 2016 election.
And who promulgated it? We’ll get to that in a minute.
And then it died. Why did it die pretty soon? Because Joe Biden in 2019-20 was a candidate, and he was going to be the only viable candidate for the Left. They were terrified of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg is too far left. And Joe Biden was handsy, a euphemism for touching women, hugging them too long. One of them, Tara Reade, came forward and said she’d been sexually assaulted.
And of course, Bill Clinton then earned renewed scrutiny. What did you actually do, Bill? And after you left office, we hear about the [Jeffrey] Epstein connection, we hear about women on your plane, and all of a sudden it disappeared, Me Too.
Then I could go on with the COVID lockdown and the paranoia that ended up probably killing more people, destroying millions of lives economically, ruining education.
I could go into the George Floyd paranoia after the death of George Floyd. Thirty-five killed, $2 billion in property damage, 1,500 police officers, five months of looting, arson, destruction.
What do all these things have in common? Well, they’re melodramas. They’re psychodramas. All of a sudden, people take a legitimate issue and they start to use it to achieve a political aim.
It’s no accident that the AI hysteria is happening right before the election.
And usually, in all of these cases – the Carl Sagan nuclear winter, the Al Gore climate change, the Paul Ehrlich population drama, the BLM ginned-up rioting after George Floyd, the opponents of Donald Trump who wanted to lock down the economy – they’re usually used by the Left.
And finally, let’s be frank. When they’re all over, Carl Sagan is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Paul Ehrlich is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Al Gore starts out as any politician, supposedly very poor. He’s from an affluent family, and he’s now a near-billionaire.
And the BLM people who ginned up the George Floyd riots, they all retreated to plush homes, used those monies that were intended to be nonprofit funds for their own personal aggrandizement.
In sum, when you see a sudden epidemic, a melodrama, a hysteria, just be very careful because the odds are it will be in an election year, it’ll be ginned up by a so-called left-wing expert, and when it’s all over, that left-wing expert will be pretty wealthy.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
Beijing Moves Down The AI Stack: After GPUs, China Is Coming For Broadcom’s Switches
Xi Jinping lands in Washington for a state visit today, but as Bloomberg sums up the mood in one line: the two leaders “may find common ground on AI safety, but neither is willing to give ground in the technology race.” And right on schedule, the FT reports that Beijing has started counting Broadcom switches.
According to the FT, China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which oversees the country’s state-owned companies, has spent recent weeks surveying how much Broadcom switching gear is installed in state-controlled data centres. The count came back… high: “The survey found that the penetration rate of Broadcom switches among state-owned companies could be as high as 90 per cent, one of the people said.”
The exercise supports Beijing’s “domestic chips for domestic use” campaign. The initial findings could lead SASAC to issue “informal guidance” telling state data centres to cut back on Broadcom. In Beijing, informal guidance tends to carry the weight of a formal order.
Why switches, and why now
Switches get little attention in the AI boom, but they decide whether 10,000 accelerators work together as one training cluster or sit around as 10,000 very expensive heaters. Broadcom’s merchant Ethernet silicon dominates that layer worldwide. Nvidia and Huawei also sell high-end switches in China, but Nvidia is already barred from state-backed data centers. That leaves Broadcom as the last major American supplier embedded in China’s state AI build-out.
SASAC is also looking at how Broadcom sells, not just how much. Per the FT, the agency is checking whether Broadcom used its market lead to bundle products or require purchase commitments of up to tens of thousands of switch chips. Those terms allegedly limited how much H3C and Ruijie Networks could buy from other vendors such as Huawei. H3C and Ruijie are the preferred vendors on the procurement lists behind billions of dollars in annual public-sector IT spending. If that line of questioning sounds familiar, Beijing used the same approach last year when it found Nvidia had breached antimonopoly law over its Mellanox deal. Mellanox is, notably, a networking business.
Two caveats from the FT story:
Private operators are exempt. ByteDance and Alibaba are not covered, so the rule doesn’t reach the companies doing most of China’s frontier training.
Nothing gets ripped out. Existing gear stays in place. One rack-maker sales rep described the policy as “part of a broader policy to ‘nationalise the supply chain’.” In practice, that means a replacement cycle rather than a purge.
The stakes for Broadcom
According to its latest 10-K, 17% of Broadcom’s FY2025 revenue (about $10.9bn of $63.9bn) came from shipments to China including Hong Kong. That was down from 20% a year earlier. Much of that figure is ship-to accounting for contract manufacturers assembling gear for non-Chinese customers, so true Chinese end-demand is smaller. AVGO rose about 0.5% on the headline, which suggests traders don’t see much damage. Sure enough, while the near-term P&L hit is modest but the strategic cost is bigger: switching is set to become a multibillion-dollar market inside China, and it is being set aside for domestic suppliers.
The bigger picture: Goldman’s numbers on China’s self-reliance push
Goldman’s recent research shows how quickly the domestic stack is filling in:
The demand side is large. Goldman’s desk points out that China’s domestic AI chip market is “quietly gearing up for a staggering 69% compound annual growth rate through 2030.”GS Research’s CHIPS IV forecasts China semiconductor capex rising +13% / +15% / +15% in 2026–28, driven by memory and advanced-node capacity.
The foundry is full. In the SMIC note (available to pro subs here), Allen Chang says SMIC grew revenue 20% QoQ in 2Q26. That was the fastest among the global top-10 foundries, whose aggregate growth was 11.5%. Chang attributes it to “China’s strong AI demand and customers diversifying their suppliers to better secure capacity.” Utilization is expected to stay above 95% through 2H26, new wafer pricing takes effect in 3Q26, and 54–71% of capex goes to 7nm and advanced nodes. Goldman expects no ASP declines because there’s no spare capacity to discount.
The private sector is localizing without being told to. In the Alibaba note after the Apsara conference (available here for pro subs), Golman analyst Ronald Keung forecasts capex of Rmb209bn / 243bn / 260bn for FY27–29E and a cloud power footprint of 20GW by 2032, supported by “unique cost advantages from its custom T-head silicon.” Alibaba is exempt from the SASAC push, yet it is building its own chips anyway.
Policy points the same way.Goldman chief China economist Hui Shan writes that policymakers are “focused on advanced manufacturing rather than broad-based easing.” So while consumers deal with a housing slump, the fabs keep getting funded.
Put Goldman’s research next to the policy timeline and the pattern is clear:
August 2025: New data centers told to source at least 50% of chips locally.
September 2025: Big tech told to stop buying Nvidia’s China-specific chips, and regulators issued the Mellanox antitrust finding.
November 2025: State-funded data centers banned from using foreign AI accelerators (Reuters).
June 2026: A reported ~2 trillion yuan ($295bn) national compute plan through 2028 with an 80% domestic-content target (TechTimes).
September 2026: The survey of switches, one of the last foreign-made layers left.
On the supply side, Huawei used last week’s Huawei Connect to lay out an Ascend roadmap of the 960 in 2027, 970 in 2028 and 980 in 2029. It also showed an Atlas 960 SuperPoD that links 4,096 NPUs over its proprietary UnifiedBus interconnect, which means its networking is in-house too (Irish Times). DeepSeek reportedly plans to deploy at least 160,000 Ascend 950DTs. Huawei has raised 950DT prices by 60%, citing “tight component supply,” which suggests pricing power is not an American monopoly either.
The catch: domestic gear costs more to run
Industry experts told the FT that Huawei’s switches are less energy-efficient than Broadcom’s, which means higher power bills for users. That matches Goldman’s SMIC work: with utilization above 95% and no price cuts coming, “domestic” currently also means “capacity-constrained and not cheap.” China’s workaround is to build power generation faster than anyone else, which they’ve done this admirably.
And unlike the US, China has the electrical capacity to build all of this. China has 4000GW of total power generation and growing 20%. The US is at 1200GW and flat (with PJM and ERCOT nearing capacity) https://t.co/mEwD3LzvXspic.twitter.com/p0xFKqeEAB
Export controls were meant to keep China a generation or two behind in AI hardware. They did slow progress in places, but they also gave Beijing both a reason and the political cover to replace every layer of the stack: accelerators, foundry, memory, interconnect and now switches. Each layer runs slower and hotter than its US counterpart, but it is Chinese-made. The market Broadcom has lost is small this year and likely to shrink further. Goldman’s 69% CAGR figure describes a market growing quickly, and US suppliers are increasingly shut out of it.
The dispute over Missouri’s new congressional map returned to the Supreme Court for the third time, with justices considering whether the state can use the GOP-backed map in the midterm elections.
The new map could help Republicans gain an additional U.S. House seat in the Nov. 3 elections.
The Supreme Court has twice prevented the state from using the redrawn congressional map, most recently on Sept. 10, when it granted the opponents’ bid to stay a federal judge’s order allowing the state to use the map in the midterm elections.
People Not Politicians, the group opposing the redrawn congressional map, filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 22 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that using the 2022 map in the Nov. 3 general elections would be unconstitutional, as the state had already used the redrawn 2025 map in the August 2026 primaries.
In a Sept. 21 ruling, the Eighth Circuit ordered U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark to enter a permanent injunction barring Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using any congressional map other than the one the Legislature approved in 2025.
The federal appeals court stayed its ruling until Sept. 28 to allow time for a Supreme Court review.
Opponents asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling, saying it undermined the court’s previous injunction blocking the use of the 2025 congressional map.
“The Eighth Circuit’s order does not merely undermine this court’s stay order; it requires the district court to issue a permanent injunction granting the exact same relief this court stayed in the exact same case,” the motion stated.
The motion asks the Supreme Court to clarify that its Sept. 10 stay “precludes enforcement of the replacement injunction – or any additional federal court injunctions contrary to the stay order – so long as that stay remains in effect.”
Opponents also argued that the Eighth Circuit lacked jurisdiction to enter the ruling.
“The Eighth Circuit cannot disrupt an imminent election after ballots have been cast by issuing relief that this court has already foreclosed and that it lacked jurisdiction to grant, all based on a merits theory of the panel’s own invention,” they said.
The Supreme Court gave supporters of the new map until midday on Wednesday to respond to the latest appeal.
The 2022 map, drawn by the General Assembly after the 2020 census, was designed to give Republicans a 6-2 edge. The 2025 map, drawn as part of a mid-decade redistricting, was designed to give them a 7-1 advantage.
Missouri held primary elections on Aug. 4 using the 2025 Missouri First map approved by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. President Donald Trump supported the redrawn map.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs rejected on Sept. 23 a bid to seek immunity for a longtime special assistant to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The vote on a resolution authorizing an application for a court order compelling testimony under immunity from the assistant, who was not identified, fell short of the required two-thirds of members.
All eight Republicans, but no Democrats, voted in favor. Two Democrats would have had to cross the aisle for the resolution to be approved.
Fauci, 85, headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022.
He refused to answer questions before the panel earlier in the year, citing the Fifth Amendment, prompting the committee to refer him for contempt of Congress to federal prosecutors.
The Department of Justice has not charged Fauci with any crimes.
He said her position “placed her in the flow of communications directly relevant to our investigation” into Fauci.
She recently appeared behind closed doors before the committee and invoked the Fifth Amendment, or her right against self-incrimination.
The questions senators want answered primarily deal with the destruction of government records, Paul said. A doctor who was a longtime adviser to Fauci recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to delete government records. Fauci has directed subordinates to delete emails.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who voted against the resolution, said before the vote that senators should pursue a “good-faith bipartisan approach to obtain this information” rather than rush to approve the resolution.
Republicans expressed frustration and anger that only Hassan among Democratic panel members was present during the meeting.
“I come from the private sector. To not show up to a meeting, to say ‘I refuse to do my job,’ is something that only happens in politics,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said.
“That is outrageous.”
After the vote, Paul said:
“A majority of the committee voted to seek the truth. All Republicans voted to seek the truth. We voted to protect this witness and hear her story. All we needed was two Democrats who wanted to hear her story, but not a single one of them is interested in the investigation or the truth about destruction of federal records.”
Hassan said that was a mischaracterization of the Democrats’ position.
Paul said he would be sending a letter to the Department of Justice requesting pursuit of the matter, and said his committee’s investigation into government record destruction will continue.
President Donald Trump and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez met Tuesday night on the sidelines of a United Nations reception, their first face-to-face talks since American forces seized then-President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Venezuela’s Interim President Delcy Rodriguez and U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 22, 2026. Venezuela Presidential Palace Handout via Reuters
The pull-aside was booked for 7:40 p.m. at a gathering Trump is hosting during the U.N. General Assembly. No joint appearance was planned nor a detailed agenda released.
Participants in the pull-aside meeting with Rodriguez included State Secretary Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
“We held a historic meeting with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, during which we discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, security, and other matters of mutual interest,” Rodriguez said in a statement on Telegram.
“We expressed our gratitude to President Trump and his administration for the steadfast support provided during the emergency caused by the earthquakes of June 24, as well as for their backing of our country’s reintegration into multilateral forums,” she wrote, according to a translation. “Venezuela and the United States share a historic relationship that, in this new phase, we are called upon to steer through dialogue. We will continue to pursue a diplomacy that serves the national interest, aimed at achieving concrete results and collective benefits for the Venezuelan people.”
Rodriguez landed Monday for what is her first trip to the United States since taking office. She is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Wednesday afternoon.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told reporters about the upcoming meeting on a call.
“The president will host a U.N. General Assembly leaders’ reception. There, he’ll participate in a pull-aside with the acting president Rodriguez of Venezuela,” Waltz said. He did not say what they would discuss.
Trump spoke to the General Assembly on Tuesday morning, hours before the reception, where he called Maduro an “outlaw dictator,” adding that hundreds of political prisoners had been freed since the capture. Trump pointed to the January raid as proof Washington would use its “unmatched military might” to protect its interests in the Western Hemisphere.
“To the victor belong the spoils,” he said, calling an oil deal his administration signed with Caracas last month “perhaps the biggest deal ever made.”
He has said he wants $100 billion in investment to flow into Venezuela’s oil industry.
On Sept. 16, Trump removed Venezuela from the U.S. list of countries that have failed to combat drug trafficking. The country had been on that list since 2005.
“Given the positive steps taken under interim President Delcy Rodríguez, I have determined Venezuela should no longer be designated as having failed demonstrably to fulfill its drug control commitments,” the presidential determination said. “I expect to see continued, measurable progress from the interim government in dismantling narcoterrorist groups and stopping drug trafficking through Venezuela to the United States.”
Last month the two governments signed an energy agreement covering 65 billion barrels of reserves. Trump called it in a Truth Social post “the biggest oil deal in world history.”
Rodriguez said the pact is meant to last 25 years and to develop 17 strategic oil fields with a production target of more than 1.5 million barrels a day.
“This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X.
Rodriguez, 56, was born in Caracas and trained as a lawyer. Maduro named her vice president in 2018. U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Jan. 3 and flew them to the United States on narcoterrorism and drug charges. Venezuela’s high court then designated Rodriguez interim president. Maduro has pleaded not guilty.
Iran Vows To ‘Paralyze’ Regional Airports Which Prevent Its Flights From Landing
Facing crippling US sanctions against its aviation sector as part of the Trump/Bessent Economic D-Day initiative, Iran is warning that if regional countries join the sanctions action, their own airports could be targeted.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has on Wednesday put neighboring states who are allies of Washington on notice. The statement warned their airports will be “paralyzed” if they cooperate with US attempts to prevent the landing of Iranian airliners.
Source: Government of Kuwait
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on Monday that by Wednesday. Sept. 23, “all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.“
He warned that any airports or companies providing fuel, landing, and ticketing for sanctioned Iranian entitiesrisk dollar-system exclusion.
Already Turkey has taken the dramatic action of canceling all flights in the foreseeable future for various Iranian carriers.
According to more of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council statement, delivered via its chief, Mohsen Rezaei, “We ask all the countries of the region not to join America’s adventure. If they do not allow Iranian aircraft to travel, their own airports will not be able to have flights either.”
“You are our friends, but you should not join America’s ranks. You should prevent the war from spreading,” he added. Throughout the prior seven months of war with the US, Iran has shown a willingness to target major civilian hubs, particularly in neighboring Kuwait.
Iran is defiantly planning to press forward with its commercial airline operations. While some countries are complying with the US order, China is clearly not…
An Iranian Mahan Air flight from Tehran landed in Guangzhou, China today, Sept. 23 as new U.S. aviation sanctions took effect, flight Radar shows.
As for the heavily sanctioned Iranian aviation industry, in recent years the Islamic Republic has suffered some significant aerial disasters, which included the May 19, 2024 death of President Ebrahim Raisi. His military helicopter went down in a rugged, mountainous area of northwestern Iran.
Some speculate that lack of airline parts and aging aircraft, due to the long-standing US targeting of the industry, has only served to increase the chances of aviation disasters.
A new poll from the Rainey Center for Public Policy shows just 7 percent of registered voters view data centers as a top-three national political issue, confirming that fewer than 10 percent prioritize them at the federal level.
The Washington Examiner reports that the survey of 1,004 registered voters found that found that national concern over data centers remains low with artificial intelligence itself drawing just 12 percent support as a top issue.
The poll was conducted between Sept. 10 and 14, after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his role and warned of the existential threat of AI, sparking a nationwide conversation about AI regulation.
Voters have a clear ask: build it right. 71% support requiring data-center operators to sign community benefits agreements – covering things like jobs, tax revenue, and grid upgrades – before construction begins. Read our September Policy Survey: Summary of Findings – link in… pic.twitter.com/gb1O7nDMUx
Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents listed “grocery prices, gas and household utilities” as the most salient issue, followed by 30 percent listing jobs and the economy, and 20 percent listing affordable housing.
The poll showed AI as the 13th-most salient issue, directly following energy costs and transgender issues in schools and sports, with data centers being built in communities coming in as the 15th-most salient issue, behind cybersecurity.
According to PBS Newshour , while voters do not rank data centers high on national political agendas, opposition spikes dramatically when facilities are planned nearby.
Fifrt-eight percent of voters say new tech data centers have a mostly negative effect on the country and 65 percent of voters oppose building these facilities in their own communities.
Meanwhile 25 percent of voters say they support local data center construction.
The polling results follow a week of federal and state lawmakers debating how and whether to proceed with additional AI regulations in the face of calls for guardrails on their own industry from frontier AI lab leaders , according to the Washington Examiner.
When questioned on what specifically should be the top three priorities for lawmakers on data centers and AI, 48 percent of survey respondents responded “holding AI companies liable for harms,” while 38 percent answered that “data centers pay their own electricity.”
National leaders remain largely divided on the issue, with President Donald Trump calling on people to ignore the calls for new guardrails because of the United States’ AI race with China.
Financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter (aka Mr. Gold) has warned for years about what happens in the end when a debt bubble pops.
Mr. Gold explains, “This bubble is like any other bubble in mankind’s history…”
” In the 1920s, credit was extremely easy. When credit tightened, it was the wealth effect in reverse. We saw this again in the early 1970s. We saw this again in the 1987 crash. Interest rates went from 7% to over 10% . . . and that bubble popped. We had the emerging market debt problem back in the early 1990s, Long Term Capital in 1998, the Dot Com bubble in 2000, the 2007-2008 Great Financial Crisis, and all you have to do is look at a chart of bond yields and you’ll see that each time yields spiked, those bubbles popped. Right now, interest rates are spiking, and this is the biggest bubble.
This is the everything bubble. Everything is in a bubble. The only things that are not in a bubble are gold and silver because they are real money.
I think gold and silver are reflecting the risk of the debt structure coming down.
From a global standpoint, countries are moving away from the dollar. They don’t want to be trapped in the dollar system. The dollar is the world reserve currency that is issued by an insolvent bankrupt entity.
Higher rates, that’s what is going to blow everything up, higher rates.”
Mr. Gold says the rates can fall back down in a hurry if the economy starts to skid.
Mr. Gold also says the so-called “reset” you have been hearing about for years is real. It cannot be stopped, but it is an unfolding process right up until the very end. Holter says:
“The reset is not a pushed button until the very, very end. That very, very end is going to be a weekend where you go to bed Friday and things look normal, and on Monday morning, the whole world will have changed. . .. Rising interest rated have happened hundreds of times in history. That is not the reset.
The reset is when those rising rates affect the existing debt in the system, and that debt fails and collapses.
Of course, you can add in derivatives, and the reset is really a wipeout of wealth. It’s the wipeout of the population’s wealth. Along with that goes the ‘Great Taking.’ They started putting these laws on the books in 2014 knowing there was going to be a huge rug pull at some point. They made it legal for brokers, banks and insurance companies to take client assets . . . to save the corporations.
What does that do to the population? The population becomes penniless. If you are not protecting yourself, you are going to get swept up in the wave of the Great Reset.”
Holter says the Deep State wants total control, which is why there is a big push to go all digital.
Holter says buying gold and silver is not about making money but protecting purchasing power and a defense against the Great Reset.
Holter says, “If you lose 50%, you have to make 100% to get back to break even. This is not going to be a time that you lose 50% and then things will start going back up again…”
” Because of the debt all over the world, when the debt breaks, the financial system is going to break.
If you have counterparties between you and your capitol, you are going to lose your capitol.
People ask, how much do I put into gold and silver, and I say put in what you don’t want to lose.
Gold and silver are the only money on the planet that cannot bankrupt in a world that is bankrupting.
If you had this (gold) mindset since 2000, you are way ahead of the pack compared to the S&P or the DOW. There was zero default risk.
When you bought gold, you got the biggest return and took the lowest risk.”
There is much more in the 44-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog as he goes one-on-one with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter/Mr. Gold as he warns of the Great Reset and the Great Taking that will come with it for 9.22.26.
The US East Coast has avoided any tropical development so far this year, but a developing nor’easter in the Atlantic just off the North Carolina and Virginia coast could still deliver hurricane-force winds and heavy rain, with the greatest impacts expected in the Northeast later this week and into the weekend.
“Oh, this Nor’easter is going to be an ordeal. This storm will be a monster and will be lashing the coast for several days. Thank your lucky stars this isn’t January because it would be the most epic blizzard,” meteorologist Ryan Maue wrote on X, adding, “Maybe it’s a harbinger of ‘bomb cyclones’ to come this winter?”
Oh, this Nor’easter is going to be an ordeal.
This storm will be a monster and will be lashing the coast for several days.
Thank your lucky stars this isn’t January because it would be the most epic blizzard.
The nor’easter formed earlier today off North Carolina and Virginia and is forecast to strengthen as it moves north along the coast, potentially bringing severe weather to coastal areas of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Nor’easter: brace for 50 mph wind gusts and 15 ft waves! 🌊
It’s going to be a rough ride for the East Coast.
The storm’s worst will probably lash the corridor from New York to Boston this weekend, with coastal flooding a primary concern because of high tides and strong winds. pic.twitter.com/BCAjWa9x25
“This will be a long-duration storm for many areas along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts, with impacts beginning along the central Atlantic coast at midweek, spreading to New England on Friday and lasting through the weekend in some areas,” AccuWeather wrote in a report.
⚠️🌊🌬️ Coastal Flood Warnings & Advisories are in effect for most of our tidal areas through Thursday night or Friday to highlight the widespread minor to moderate tidal flooding expected at high tides. Northeast winds gusting up to 50 mph along the coast through Thursday. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/njQ5fbJsfK
On Saturday, the worst of the storm is expected across southeastern New England, particularly Massachusetts. Local outlet NBC Boston warns that the Boston metro could expect 5 to 8 inches of rain between Friday and Sunday, while Cape Cod could see conditions on par with a tropical storm.
“If the low shifts close to Boston, this becomes a massive event with 60 to 70 mph wind gusts, heavy rainfall, major storm surge and significant disruptions to Boston Harbor and the Massachusetts coastline,” Fox Weather wrote in a separate report.
[Potential Coastal Storm Fri-Sun] After a dry week we are tracking an early season nor’easter Friday to Sunday bringing rain, strong to damaging wind gusts, as well as coastal flooding/beach erosion. pic.twitter.com/uSpZFiUx8c
