Authored by Ian Proud,

The ugly truth is that an end of the Ukraine war may have as devastating economic and political consequences for Europe as its continuance…

Ukraine already faces a $63 billion U.S. dollar funding shortfall in 2026 and I would be surprised if this figure doesn’t increase if the war continues. Ukraine’s massive fiscal splurge is driven by two factors

• The enormous cost of maintaining a standing army of almost one million people;

• The vast expense of importing weapons from the west to fight the war.

Weapon purchases are not sources of productive investment as they are literally burned in the heat of battle.

The same, of course, is true for Russia.

Both countries saw reducing economic growth in 2025, with Ukraine’s at 2.1% and 1.5%.

And, western pundits would point to this as evidence that Ukraine’s economy is performing better.

But the opposite is true.

Russia’s economy is around twelve times larger than Ukraine’s nominally and just over ten times larger when you look at GDP using purchasing power parity.

You can see this in the defence spending numbers.

Russia spent a record $143 billion on defence in 2025 compared to around $60 billion for Ukraine, so around 2.3 times higher. Yet, Russian defence spending amounted to just 6.3% of its GDP whereas for Ukraine it was 31.7%. So, massive spending on defence is a much less pivotal issue for Russia in terms of its economic fortunes.

Defence spending represents a far smaller proportion of total economic activity than it does for Ukraine. And Russia can afford to pay for its defence needs with its own finances, while Ukraine is entirely dependent on money from western donors to keep the war going.

Despite the massive cost of war, Russia ran a fiscal deficit of just 1.7% of GDP in 2025.

That is still well below the EU fiscal rule of 3% of GDP with some countries like France and Poland having deficits at or more than double that figure.

Ukraine’s fiscal deficit on the other hand was around 20% of GDP.

That gap had to be filled by foreign funding as it has debt of 107% of GDP and is cut off from foreign lending.

So, hence the EU stepping up with a loan of 90 billion Euros, two thirds of which is earmarked for defence.

Russia on the other hand has debt of around 15% of GDP and doesn’t really need to borrow heavily to keep its war effort afloat. By the way, 15% of GDP is far lower than the U.S. or any European nation, many of which, like Ukraine, have debt levels of over 100% of GDP.

Ukraine is defending itself with money Europe doesn’t have.

Despite the shock of sanctions, Russia doesn’t have to break the bank nor boost its lending significantly.

This also means that when the war eventually ends, Russia will be able to make the economic transition back to peace in a less painless way.

Russia will be under no pressure to impose massive cuts to defence spending to live within its means and can instead do so gradually.

Ukraine on the other hand faces a massive financial cliff edge when the war ends.

Ukrainian economic growth according to the OECD is set to fall further to 1.7% in 2027 if the war continues.

And that assumes continued large injections of capital from outside countries. In 2025, Ukrainian defence spending made up 31.1% of Ukrainian GDP, and two thirds of state budgetary expenditure. None of that spending goes into improving Ukraine’s weak economy.

With all of the support that it receives, Ukraine’s GDP in 2025 amounted to just under $210 billion according to the IMF.

Bear in mind here that Ukraine received $52.4 billion in external financing in 2025, or around one quarter of its GDP at the end of the year.

Take away foreign funding and Ukraine suddenly sees its economy shrink by over 20%.

Or, put it another way, take away the war and Ukraine sees its economy shrink by over 20%.

Russia simply does not face the same problem.

Rather, an end to the war may help Russia to get inflation – perhaps its biggest economic challenge – under control as economic activity returns to its normal rhythm.

But still the question arises, how come Ukraine has grown so little when it received so much foreign funding?

One big reason is that Ukraine recorded a trade deficit of $30 billion over the same period, a record according to the National Bank of Ukraine.

So, $52 billion in foreign money came into Ukraine during the year and $30 billion went straight back out again.

Because Ukraine’s massive trade deficit is fuelled by two things.

• First, a huge increase in the import of weapons from western suppliers which have doubled since 2022, not least as they are no longer being provided free of charge.

• Second, Ukraine has increased its imports of natural resources, in particular a massive increase in gas imports, because domestic production has been hit hard by the war. Coal is another area, as Russia has swallowed up important coal mines in the Donbas.

Not all of that deficit in trade will be recoverable even after the war ends, even if Ukraine was able to reduce the overall size of its trade deficit.

By comparison, Russia’s surplus of trade in goods was already at over $100 billion by October 2025, although the overall trade picture is narrower, at around $36 billion because of a significant deficit in services trade, including from large numbers of Russians who have moved overseas since the war started.

An end to the war, if anything, may allow Russia’s trade surpluses to grow further. A future relaxation on the import of natural resources into Europe could mean that Russia benefited from already increased trade with Asia and renewed trade with Europe.

In any case, the consistent surpluses that Russia pulls in both help shore up economic growth and foreign exchange reserves, which in 2025 grew by over $135 billion to a whopping $734 billion.

And just to be clear, Russia put their reserve funds almost completely into gold which now stand at over $310 billion.

One big reason for Russia storing its reserves in gold is to keep them clear of the stealing hands of western bureaucrats, who froze around $300 billion in reserves at the start of the war.

This means that Russia has a surplus of $434 billion in foreign exchange reserves which is almost completely insulated from western expropriation. The $10 billion rise in foreign currency reserves in 2025 was undoubtedly caused by an accumulation of reserves in non-dollar, Euro and sterling currencies, suggesting the move to greater trade in Chinese Yuan and Indian rupees.

An end to the war may at some point lead to the unfreezing of immobilised Russian assets in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Ukraine’s reserve position is also comparatively strong, at $57.3 billion at the start of 2026, a record figure. However, that rise is completely down to inflows of foreign capital to fund the war effort. An end to the war would likely shrink Ukraine’s reserves as its stubborn trade deficit was not being offset by foreign inflows of funds as they had been during war.

But it’s the sudden and shocking loss of foreign funding that accompanies an end to the war which will cause Ukraine’s economy to shrink dramatically.

But fear not, Europe is determined that Ukraine maintain an army of 800,000 personnel when the war ends. However, this seems more about economic survival than about security.

Ukraine would not be able to pay for such as large army with its own money, as it doesn’t have any money. So, once again, Europe will be forced to step in to meet Ukraine’s financing needs to pay the salaries of soldiers who are no longer in war fighting mode.

This will lead to debt and taxes rising in Europe, according to a recent Kiel Institute study. But it will also lead to a loss of business for European defence firms. Because peace time will inevitably mean a sharp drop in the munitions and military material being burned on a daily basis in the fog of war.

Two thirds of the EU’s recently 90 billion Euro loan to Ukraine will be spent on military support, including weaponry. That has sparked an argument between Germany and France over a proposed ‘buy European’ clause, with France wanting to prevent Ukrainian purchases of U.S. equipment. Perhaps with one eye on the future, the French in typical fashion, are trying to ensure that their firms get a decent share of what could amount to dwindling Ukrainian orders for weapons.

A bit like the French army, Europe is reversing itself inevitably into economic defeat when the war ends.

Obligated to keep an economically failed Ukraine on life support.

Having to increase its debt and taxes to support bad foreign policy decisions it has been taking since 2014.

Trying to boost its defence industrial complex but losing business with the end of war.

For the mainstream political parties in Europe, this adds to the trend of them heading towards electoral Armageddon when they start putting themselves to the polls from 2027 onward.

Until then, they are stuck, knowing that continuing the war will kill them electorally, and knowing that ending the war will too.

To quote my old British soldier dad, they are like the mythical oozlum bird, continually going round in circles until they disappear up their own backsides.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The whole planet is somehow convulsed by neo-Caligula’s latest scam: because he did not get his “peace” Nobel from Norway, part of his megalomanic narcissist revenge is to bag Greenland from Denmark (in Empire-speak, who cares? These Scandinavians are all the same anyway).

In neo-Caligula’s own words: “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

That seals the Empire of Chaos completely morphed into the Empire of Plunder and now the Empire of Permanent Strikes.

Assorted Euro-chihuahuas dared to dispatch a tiny bunch of dog-sled conductors to defend Greenland from neo-Caligula. To no avail. They were instantly hit with tariffs. The strike remains in effect until the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland.

Euro-chihuahuas – following the Global South – may have finally woken up to the new paradigm: Strike Geopolitics.

Neo-Caligula did not get regime change in Caracas – and his oil mirage was refuted even by US energy majors. He did not get regime change in Tehran – even if CIA, Mossad and assorted NGOs worked full time to deliver.

So Plan C is Greenland, essential for imperial lebensraum purposes, as collateral for the unpayable $38 trillion – and rising – debt.

By all means that does not imply ditching the Iran obsession. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is moving into a position in the Sea of Oman/Persian Gulf where it would be able to strike Iran before the end of the week. All attack scenarios remain in place.

Assuming all hell breaks loose, this may become an even more humiliating replay of the 12-day war in June last year, which the death cult in West Asia spent as much as 14 months planning.

The 12-day war not only failed as a regime change op; it engendered a sample of Iranian retaliation so hardcore that Tel Aviv still has not recovered. Tehran has been explicit, over and over again, that the same fate awaits neo-Caligula’s forces in Iran and across the Gulf in case of renewed strikes.

Why the regime change obsession endures

As for the equally, miserably failed regime change op on Iran these past few weeks, it featured on the forefront the pathetic Clown Prince Reza Pahlavi, safely ensconced in Maryland, massively plugged by US media as a “unifying political figure” capable of reassessing the “lived catastrophe of clerical rule”.

Neo-Caligula was too busy to care about these ideological niceties. What he wanted was to accelerate the proceedings by – what else – applying Empire of Permanent Strikes logic: bombing Iran.

Diversionist spin, predictably, went ballistic. The death cult in West Asia may have asked Moscow to tell Tehran that they would not strike if Iran did not strike first. As if Tehran – and Moscow – could trust anything coming from Tel Aviv.

The Gulfie crowd – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman – may have asked neo-Caligula not to strike, because that would have set the whole Gulf on fire and generate “grave blowback”.

The real deal – once again – was TACO. There was simply no gamed US strike scenario that would have allowed lightning quick regime change, the only acceptable outcome. Thus back to bagging Greenland.

It took only a few days to unmask the massive propaganda campaign across NATOstan about “mass casualties” among Iran protesters.

The – fake – figures came from the Center for Human Rights in Iran, located in, where else, New York, and financed by the CIA-infested National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington and other assorted disinformation entities.

The list of reasons for urgent regime change in Iran though remains off the charts, featuring, among others, these four key elements:

1. Tehran must ditch the Axis of Resistance across West Asia supporting Palestine.

2. Because Iran is at the privileged crossroads of trade/energy connectivity corridors in Eurasia, both its connections with the
   International North–South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) and China’s New Silk Roads (BRI) must be severed. That means blowing up from the inside organic intra-BRICS cooperation between Russia, Iran, India and China.

3. As over 90% of Iranian oil exports go to China – and are settled in yuan – that’s a serious threat to the petrodollar: the ultimate anathema. That’s where in Empire of Permanent Strikes terms, Iran aligns with Venezuela. It’s our – petrodollar – way or the highway.

4. The staying power of the never-ending dream of an Iran under the Shah remix – complete with a Shah-style SAVAK secret police; cozy Mossad ties to rein in those Arab barbarians; and a sprawling CIA-run net of surveillance hubs targeting both Russia and China.

How to counter a “regime-change war”

Tehran is not spooked by sanctions – as it has endured over 6,000 of them over four decades, designed to totally strangle its economy and even bring oil exports, in imperial terminology, down “to zero”.

Even under maximum pressure, Iran was capable of building the most extensive industrial base across West Asia; relentlessly invested in self-sufficiency and state of the art military hardware; joined the SCO in 2023 and BRICS in 2024; and for all practical purposes developed a top Global South knowledge economy.

Tsunamis of – digital – ink have been spent on why China has not properly helped Iran so far against imperial maximum pressure, for instance supporting Tehran against the speculative attacks on the rial. That would have cost Beijing almost nothing – compared to its level of foreign reserves.

The speculative attack on the rial was arguably the essential trigger of the protests across Iran. It’s essential to remember that hunger salaries were a key contributor to the collapse of Syria.

It’s up to Beijing to – diplomatically – answer this uncomfortable question. The spirit of BRICS Plus – call it Bandung 1955 Plus – may not survive when we all know this current world war is essentially about resources and finance, which need to be mobilized and properly deployed.

And that brings us to China’s leadership seriously evaluating whether it’s worth to remain a sort of larger version of Germany: embryonically self-centered; harboring fear; and fundamentally selfish in economic and financial terms. The – auspicious – alternative is for China to create sufficiently sized credit facilities within BRICS to an array of friendly nations.

Whatever happens next, it’s clear that the Empire of Permanent Strikes not only will remain “actively hostile” to a multipolar, multi-nodal world; the hostility will be marinated in a toxic sludge of anger and revenge, and subordinated to the ultimate, panic fear: the Empire’s slowly but surely, inexorable expulsion from Eurasia.

Cue to White House Special Representative Witkoff – the real estate Bismarck – enouncing the imperial diktats to Iran:

1. Stop enriching uranium. Out of the question,

2. Reduce missile stockpiles. Out of the question.

3. Reduce approximately 2000 kg of enriched nuclear material (3.67–60 %). That might be negotiated.

4. Stop supporting “regional proxies” – as in the Axis of Resistance. Out of the question.

Tehran will never bow down to the diktats. But even if it did, the – promised – imperial reward would be the lifting of sanctions (the US Congress will never do it) and a “return to the international community”. Iran is already part of the international community at the UN and inside BRICS, SCO and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), among other institutions.

So the neo-Caligula regime change obsession – in fact mirrored as a NATOstan obsession – will keep ruling. Tehran is not intimidated. Cue to the strategic advisor to Iran’s Parliament Speaker, Mahdi Mohammadi:

“We know that we are facing a regime-change war in which the only way to achieve victory is to make credible the threat that, during the 12-day war, although it was ready, did not get the opportunity to be carried out: a geographically expansive war of attrition, focused on the Persian Gulf energy markets, on the basis of steadily increasing missile firepower, lasting at least several months.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

A man styling himself “biz_dave” on Threads claims to have orchestrated what can only be described as the Resistance’s most feather-brained gambit yet: training crows to pilfer red baseball caps in service of opposing President Donald Trump. Naturally, this has elevated him to something approaching sainthood among the online Resistance.

Dave claimed that the operation involved conditioning a murder of crows – a term that has never seemed more apt – to recognize a feeding station and subsequently engage in aerial larceny against red headwear. The sad man’s admirers have dubbed the result an “anti-MAGA flying army,” a phrase that does more to explain the current state of progressive activism than any think-piece possibly could, the Daily Star reports.

Dave has meticulously chronicled his ornithological jihad on Threads, offering videos, photographs, and a veritable field manual for those inspired to conscript their own backyard fauna into the culture wars. He began with the fundamentals of corvid care: “The crows will eat lots of things, but I recommend sticking to peanuts, chicken scraps, mealworms, and dog kibble.” One pictures him at the grocery store, carefully selecting provisions for his feathered shock troops.

View on Threads

View on Threads

View on Threads

View on Threads

Dave confessed that the true obstacle was less philosophical than practical.

“Getting the crows to come regularly to the feeding place took the longest. That was about a 4-month endeavor,” he claimed. Four months – roughly the length of time required to master a foreign language or complete a professional certification – devoted instead to establishing diplomatic relations with local scavengers. Following a reliable peanut subsidy and months of patient courtship, the birds apparently agreed to join the cause. “Once they were coming regularly, it was only about three months to get them to the hat removal stage,” Dave said, according to the Daily Star.

As is customary with such internet crusades, the project eventually metastasized from quirky stunt into moral imperative. Dave solemnly declared his political awakening: “I tried to be centrist for a long time but I no longer believe that is a moral option.” Centrism having been ruled out, training crows to harass strangers was evidently the next logical step.

Even Reddit – not typically a bastion of leftwing restraint – produced some skeptics.

“OK, so I love this for the people wearing those red hats, but this would absolutely not be good for the crows,” one user noted.

Another observed: “I really don’t like pulling wild animals into stupid human shit like this.”

A third commenter offered a tactical suggestion with a certain elemental appeal: “Now train it to poop on the hat.“

After attempting to jail and assassinate Trump, training crows is all the anti-MAGA crusaders have left.

Authored by Naziya Alvi Rahman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Australian Parliament has passed two new bills that will set up a national gun buyback scheme, and attempt to combat anti-Semitism and hate speech in response to the Bondi terror attack.

In Australia’s lower house, the gun buyback bill passed 96 to 45 with the Liberal-National Coalition opposing, while the hate and extremism-focused bill passed with amendments, securing 116 votes to just seven.

Later on the evening of Jan. 20, both bills made it through the Senate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote on X that the government was “standing against hate and strengthening” national security.

New Gun Buyback Passes Lower House After 3 Hours

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 introduces not only the national gun buyback scheme, but new restrictions around background checks, the sale of firearm types, and new offences relating to accessing information online about firearms, ammunition, and accessories.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told parliament that had such measures been in place earlier, the Bondi Beach attackers would not have been able to legally obtain weapons.

The father of the terrorist duo, Sajid Akram, owned six firearms, despite his son being interviewed and cleared by intelligence agencies over concerns of radicalisation.

The bill was debated for close to three hours, with several MPs proposing amendments.

Independent MP Zali Steggall sought to ensure firearms background checks explicitly included “criminal history or proceedings relating to domestic violence or AVOs issued in local courts.”

Bob Katter, the federal MP of Kennedy, moved an amendment that would automatically revoke a firearm licence for anyone placed on an ASIO watchlist. That amendment was defeated, 88 votes to 13.

Katter, who opposed the broader reforms, blamed the Bondi attack on failures in the immigration system and argued the legislation undermined gun ownership.

“If they get their way, then the only people that will have guns are the people in uniforms. And we know what sort of society that is, that the only people that have guns are the people in uniforms,” he said.

Nationals Leader Warns Gun Control a Diversion From Real Issue

Nationals leader David Littleproud opposed the bill, describing it as a diversion.

“This is nothing more than a cheap political diversion, a cheap political diversion that is not facing up to the real problem in this country, which is radical Islamists,” Littleproud said.

He argued the Bondi attack reflected failures in enforcement rather than licensing.

“The fact is, the authorities did not act and take away the licence and the weapons as they should have,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the reforms, stressing they were not aimed at lawful firearm owners.

“This legislation is not about targeting farmers. It’s not about competitive shooters. It’s not about … law-abiding firearm owners,” he said.

“The federal bill will establish a national gun buyback scheme to purchase surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms. The gun buybacks scheme is based on the same scheme that was introduced under John Howard, Tim Fischer and Kim Beazley, three leaders who all stood up at an important moment for Australia.”

Victims Only Need to Feel Fear Under New Hate Laws

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 also passed with amendments from the opposition.

The legislation introduces a new federal offence making it illegal to publicly promote or incite racial hatred where the conduct would cause a reasonable person to feel intimidated, harassed or fearful of violence.

The offence applies to speech, symbols, gestures and online communication targeting people “because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the target.”

The law does not require proof that hatred was actually generated or that a victim felt fear—only that the conduct itself would reasonably cause intimidation or fear.

Maximum penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment apply, with higher penalties for aggravated offences, including cases involving religious officials or attempts to radicalise children. A narrow defence applies where speech or writing consists solely of quoting religious texts for teaching or discussion.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley confirmed Liberal MPs supported the amended bill.

“In the national interest, the Liberal party has today stepped up to fix legislation that the Albanese government badly mishandled,” Ley said in a statement issued after passing of the bill.

Ley said the amendments narrowed the bill’s scope to anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism, ensured new powers focused on serious criminal conduct, and required consultation with the opposition before extremist organisations could be listed or de-listed.

Crossbench Concerns About Bill’s Scope and Speed

Independent Teal MP Allegra Spender criticised both major parties for removing anti-vilification provisions from the bill, saying those measures had been sought by Jewish community groups and the government’s anti-Semitism envoy.

“My question is, what are the mechanisms you are saying that we can use now because you have rejected something that the Jewish community has been calling for a long time,” she said.

Spender warned that the current law was not specific enough, arguing Muslim and other migrant groups could be made to feel “suspect by association by failing to confront hateful individuals and ideologies directly.”

“We drift towards a culture of guilt by association rather than accountability,” she said.

Independent MP Helen Haines also raised concerns about the legislative process.

“The inquiry into this bill was only tabled this morning,” she said. “But the consequence of haste, as a legislator, is the missed opportunity to carefully consider and improve this significant legislation.”

United States Antimony Corporation announced this morning that it has completed the acquisition of a fully operational critical minerals flotation facility in Radersburg, Montana, strengthening the company’s domestic processing footprint for antimony and other strategic minerals. As a reminder and as we noted late last year, UAMY operates the only two antimony smelters in North America.

The company said it closed on the $4.75 million all-cash purchase of the property and equipment on January 16, 2026. The Radersburg facility, located between Helena and Bozeman, sits within roughly 250 miles of US Antimony’s Thompson Falls smelter, which is currently undergoing a major expansion and modernization that remains on track for completion and commissioning in February.

According to the company’s press release, the Radersburg Mill is equipped with both gravity and flotation circuits, allowing it to concentrate a wide range of minerals, including stibnite, the primary ore mineral for antimony, as well as gold, silver, copper, tungsten, and other metals. The facility includes crushing and grinding circuits, slurry-based recovery systems, and tailings storage ponds with water recycling capabilities.

Gravity concentration equipment at the site has historically been used to produce high-grade gold concentrates, while the flotation circuits can be tailored with specific reagents to recover various metals. The company noted the mill has previously processed gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc, and could be adapted to concentrate cobalt, tungsten, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals.

In addition to the purchase price, US Antimony has budgeted approximately $2 million for future capital improvements to enhance specific equipment at the facility.

Commenting on the acquisition, Chairman and CEO Gary C. Evans said the flotation mill is a necessary link in the company’s production chain. “In order for us to concentrate our raw ore from both Alaska and Montana, we must first utilize a modern flotation mill to properly concentrate the material to a high enough level that we can then feed the various furnaces located in our smelters in order to produce mil-spec antimony trisulfide,” Evans said.

He added that owning the Radersburg facility outright provides greater operational control compared with leasing. US Antimony previously leased a similar mill in Philipsburg, Montana, but canceled that lease in September 2025 after negotiations with the owners became difficult. “Making necessary capital improvements to a leased facility versus one that we control 100% made this an easy decision,” Evans said.

Evans described the acquisition as another step in reinforcing the company’s vertically integrated model. “This transaction announced today is another ‘leg on our stool’ as a fully integrated antimony company in order to maximize profitability, control our destiny, and meet the ever-growing needs of our customers whether they be industrial or the federal government,” he said.

United States Antimony announced in Q4 last year that it had received a $10 million delivery order under its newly signed indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity sole-source contract with the US Defense Logistics Agency. The order covered 315,000 lbs. of antimony metal ingots, which will be used to replenish the US National Defense Stockpile.

Antimony, a critical mineral which is used in munitions, batteries, flame retardants, and military-grade compounds, has been flagged by defense officials as a vulnerability in the U.S. industrial base.

The Trump administration has made domestic supply-chain resilience a policy priority. Trump has taken a series of executive and policy actions aimed at securing U.S. access to critical minerals, citing national security and economic independence.

Recall, last year we laid out all the winners in the coming critical mineral scramble in “The Coming Rare Earth Revolution And How To Profit: All You Need To Know About The “Ex-China Supply Chain.” Those who put on the recommended baskets are currently enjoying high double-digit gains. 

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

CBS’s “60 Minutes” finally aired its report on the Trump administration’s deportations, more than a month after the segment was taken down from the program’s lineup.

In the report, broadcast on Jan. 18, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi examined deportees sent to El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT. It aired without any mention of the story having previously been pulled from its originally scheduled date, Dec. 21, 2025.

The unaired segment nevertheless appeared online a day after it was pulled. Global TV, which airs “60 Minutes” in Canada, briefly featured the piece on its app, apparently by mistake.

CBS News said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times that its leadership “has always been committed to airing the ‘60 Minutes’ CECOT piece as soon as it was ready.”

“Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling,” it said.

The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” featured interviews with two Venezuelan men being held in the Salvadoran prison after being deported from the United States.

Last year, as part of an effort to deliver what President Donald Trump has said will be the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in U.S. history, he invoked the wartime Enemy Aliens Act to fast-track the removal of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration paid the Salvadoran government millions of dollars to send more than 200 of those Venezuelan deportees to CECOT.

The two Venezuelans interviewed by “60 Minutes” described conditions inside the prison, which they said included beatings, living in cramped cells where the lights stayed on 24 hours a day, and being forced to kneel for hours at a time.

The report was largely unchanged from the Dec. 22 version. The updated version included a short clip of Trump saying that CECOT has “very strong facilities” where security staff “don’t play games,” and another of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that “heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country” were sent there.

Alfonsi’s introduction was updated to open with the Jan. 3 military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who is currently in U.S. custody awaiting trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. In the new material, she also said she obtained data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement suggesting 33 of the 252 Venezuelan prisoners had been convicted of a crime in the United States, and reiterated a statistic from the original report that eight had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.

In the segment, Alfonsi said the Department of Homeland Security declined her request for an on-camera interview and referred questions about the prison to the government of El Salvador, which did not respond. DHS did, however, provide an explanation for why it would not share detailed records about the individuals sent to CECOT.

“We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and we aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one,” DHS wrote in an email to CBS News shown in the segment. “That would be insane.”

Marylanders are raging at left-wing Governor Wes Moore, accusing him of fast-tracking a massively power-hungry Sphere entertainment venue near Washington, DC, while working-class households across the central part of the state are drowning under crushing electricity bills.

“So this Governor spends money he doesn’t even have yet. 200 million dollars of the cost for the Sphere at National Harbor will come from the State of Maryland’s 2027 budget. He is so out of touch with what MD residents need and doesn’t care as long as his name is in the headlines every day,” Maryland resident Amy Milberger Seaman wrote in a Facebook group called “BGE Victims,” which has nearly 15,000 residents upset about exploding power bills.

Local media outlet WBAL-TV reported Monday that Sphere Entertainment plans to build its second U.S. Sphere venue in National Harbor, in Prince George’s County.

The Sphere will be slightly smaller than the one in Las Vegas, seating 6,000. Gov. Moore called the project the largest economic development project in the county’s history. The venue is expected to be funded through a mix of public and private financing, including $200 million in incentives from the state.

The venue will include an exosphere exterior LED display and a 16K x 16K interior screen, the highest-resolution LED display in the world.

Residents are furious about the new Sphere because at peak power, it uses around 28 megawatts (MW), enough to power roughly 21,000 homes. Adding more demand to an already tight power grid because of just bad policies, after years of backfiring’ climate crisis’ policies stripped reliable fossil fuel spare capacity.

Here’s what others in the Facebook group are saying about Moore:

“He is an Obama want-a-be. He loves being a celebrity. Loves having his picture taken. So much so he has at least 3 photographers. Maybe more. He is a liar, clueless about budgets. Overspends our hard earned tax dollars. He needs to go,” resident Cheryl Gaigler Utz said.

Resident Toby Allred said, “Wasteful spending!!! That’s what Democratic politicians love to do with OUR money!!”

Others said, “Build a natural gas and Power Plants First!!!“

Maryland Democrats really dropped the ball on power grid management. They put a fake climate crisis first, retired fossil fuel power generators early, and denied any new reliable fossil fuel power generation capacity on the grid, all while pushing unreliable solar and wind. The end result of bad stewardship is bankrupting the working class in the central part of the state with exploding power bills.

Maryland is a one-party rule of Democratic kings and queens. Prioritizing the Sphere over working-class folks comes as no surprise. 

via Middle East Eye

Pakistan has sealed a deal worth over $4 billion to sell military equipment, including warplanes jointly built with China, to General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, according to a report by Reuters.

The deal could significantly alter the military balance of power in the oil-rich North African country, where Haftar rules over the eastern half and a UN-recognized government led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh in Tripoli controls the west.

“Please make your armed forces as strong as possible because armed forces did guarantee the existence of countries,” Pakistan military chief Field Marshal Asim Munir said in a visit to Benghazi last week, where he met Haftar’s son, Saddam. Reuters reported that the arms deal was finalized in that meeting.

“Libya is a land of lions,” Munir said in a video clip of his address to Libyan National Army officers, referencing the Libyan Islamic Scholar Omar al-Mukhtar, whose struggle in the 1920-1930s against the Italian occupation of Libya was made famous in the 1981 movie Lion of the Desert starring Anthony Quinn.

A copy of the arms deal seen by Reuters before it was finalized said Haftar’s LNA would purchase 16 JF-17 fighter jets, a multirole combat aircraft jointly developed by Pakistan and China, along with 12 Super Mushak trainer aircraft, used for basic pilot training.

One of the Pakistani officials who spoke with Reuters said the agreement would be spread over two and a half years, with land, sea and air equipment included. Two Pakistani officials said the deal could reach up to $4.6bn – Pakistan’s largest in history.

Neither the Tripoli government nor Haftar’s forces have a substantial air force. Haftar made a failed bid to conquer Tripoli in 2019 with the backing of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia. Turkey intervened to defend the government in Tripoli, sending mercenaries and TB2 drones. Since then, it has stationed thousands of troops in the Western half of Libya and sealed a controversial maritime agreement with the government in Tripoli.

Dbeibeh was nominated prime minister of Libya in 2021 as part of a UN-backed process to prepare the country for elections. Instead, he has consolidated power in his hands and curried favor with powerful militias that control Tripoli to stay in power.

After the NATO-led removal of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya became a theatre for proxy conflict between Gulf states and Turkey. However, those battle lines have blurred in recent years.

Libya’s shifting alliances

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have extended ties to Tripoli, while Turkey has courted Haftar through his son and likely successor, Saddam. Earlier this year, discussions were held about Khalifa Haftar visiting Turkey, but the visit never materialized.

Islamabad is close to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The latter remains the closest Gulf state to Haftar, but Saudi Arabia also provided support and lobbied on his behalf. Russia’s embassy in Riyadh once served as a facilitator for Haftar’s close ties to Moscow, MEE reported.

The Haftar family’s ties with Egypt have come under strain over their support and coordination with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.

Libya’s lawless southeast and Sudan’s Darfur share a border, and Haftar has facilitated the shipment of arms to the RSF, MEE has reported. Arab officials in June said that forces aligned with Haftar launched a cross-border attack alongside the RSF on forces loyal to the Sudanese army, which Cairo backs.

Pakistan’s decision to sell arms to Haftar could also complicate its diplomatic relations with a key partner. While the Gulf states may not be alarmed by the deal, it could rile Turkey, which has close diplomatic and security links to Pakistan.

Ankara backs Pakistan in its territorial dispute with India over Kashmir. Turkey is the third largest arms supplier to Pakistan, although it is massively outperformed by the largest, China.

Pakistan’s rising role

Pakistan’s cash-strapped government is trying to boost its arms exports, capitalising on its military hardware’s performance in a deadly military clash with India in May.

Arms have poured into Libya for years despite an arms embargo that the UN has imposed on the country since 2011.mAlthough Pakistan will be selling Chinese weapons to Haftar, Pakistan’s relations with the US have also improved substantially since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in October, live from a Gaza ceasefire signing ceremony in Egypt. Munir, who is seen as the more influential Pakistani leader, has met twice with Trump this year and is expected to visit the White House a third time to discuss Gaza.

Newly released emails reveal that senior Biden administration health officials privately grappling with research suggesting recovery from Covid-19 infection provided stronger protection than vaccination alone – at the very moment the federal government was preparing sweeping vaccine mandates in 2021.

The correspondence, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, offers the clearest documentary evidence to date that top officials recognized scientific uncertainties around one-size-fits-all vaccination policies, even as they publicly dismissed the value of natural immunity.

At the center of the internal debate was a massive Israeli study of nearly 800,000 people that found prior infection conferred substantially stronger protection against reinfection than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In private emails, Dr. Anthony Fauci described the findings as “rather impressive,” acknowledging both the scale and rigor of the research, which had received prominent coverage in Science.

“The data [in the Israeli study] as reported in the news article look rather impressive . . . . but I would imagine that it is more complicated than we think . . . . [I]t is conceivable and possibly likely that those who have had a serious systemic infection develop a high level of immunity that even surpasses that of full vaccination,” Fauci wrote in an Aug. 27, 2021 email with the subject line “RE: Post infection protection vs vaccine immunity.”

Yet the same emails reveal officials’ concern that such findings could undermine the administration’s push for universal vaccination – and later, mandates – by complicating public messaging.

The documents lend new weight to claims made over the past four years by critics inside and outside government that federal agencies sidelined natural immunity not because of weak evidence, but because it was administratively inconvenient. Verifying prior infection, several officials suggested, would make policy enforcement harder and public guidance less uniform.

Acknowledging the Evidence – Privately

In exchanges with colleagues that included the surgeon general, the NIH director, and the CDC director, Fauci weighed the Israeli data against a far smaller CDC study of a few hundred Kentuckians. That CDC analysis, published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, suggested vaccination after infection reduced reinfection risk more than infection alone. As Just the News points out, “The Biden administration often used MMWR, also not peer-reviewed, to push weak research that justified its policies.”

The contrast was stark. The Israeli research – though a preprint at the time – showed natural immunity was many times more protective against reinfection and symptomatic disease. Fauci conceded the Israeli work was compelling, even while noting its retrospective design and voluntary testing.

He also speculated that the strength of natural immunity likely varied with illness severity, suggesting that recovery from “serious systemic infection” might offer better protection than vaccination – an assessment that ran counter to the administration’s public insistence that vaccination was superior across the board.

Bureaucracy Over Nuance

The emails echo statements later made by Paul Offit, a pediatrician and longtime FDA vaccine adviser, who admitted on a podcast four years ago that senior officials discussed – but ultimately rejected – recognizing natural immunity as a basis for exemption from vaccine mandates. According to Offit, the group broadly agreed that prior infection mattered immunologically. The obstacle, he said, was bureaucratic: how to document it.

NEW FOIA’d documents show that Fauci privately acknowledged “impressive” data showed natural immunity was more protective than COVID vaccines even as the Biden admin implemented mandates in 2021.

Privately officials acknowledged the strength of a study of 770,000+ people showing… pic.twitter.com/NeklY4t9GT

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 14, 2026

Offit has since criticized aspects of the administration’s Covid vaccine strategy, including booster recommendations for low-risk groups and what he described as selective data-sharing with advisory committees. His term on a key FDA vaccine panel was not extended in 2022.

While the pediatrician and vaccine inventor told Just the News the meeting’s importance had been exaggerated, Offit elaborated after the 2024 election on the 2021 meeting’s details, telling the same podcast “we all basically agreed” on an exemption but “the question was, bureaucratically,” how to verify natural immunity.

He also said Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told him at a 2023 meeting that the feds didn’t target “high-risk groups” for vaccination because that was too “nuanced” and some at high risk wouldn’t get jabbed unless everyone was told to do it. -Just the News

The newly released records also show senior officials struggling to reconcile conflicting data while preparing talking points to counter claims that vaccines were unnecessary for those already infected. In one email, CDC Covid response medical officer John Brooks summarized the state of the science: both infection and vaccination induce immunity; infection-derived protection appeared more durable; but infection carried higher risks and vaccination was “safe.”

Dr. John Brooks, CDC Chief Medical Officer, told a US Senate investigation that when the @CDC recommended cloth masks on March 31, 2020, the evidence in favor was “iron clad.”

Implication: the CDC ignored the RCTs & never followed evidence-based medicine principles. pic.twitter.com/RboW68NbsB

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) January 16, 2024

Still, Brooks acknowledged that some of the data supporting boosters were thin – one cited study involved only four subjects – and that the CDC lacked a comprehensive meta-analysis comparing infection- and vaccine-induced immunity.

Messaging vs. Evidence

Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, privately described the Israeli natural-immunity findings as “somewhat puzzling,” precisely because the study appeared well designed. He asked colleagues whether the CDC had synthesized all available evidence, noting that officials had repeatedly told the public vaccines provided better protection.

“Does CDC have a ready meta-analysis of all of the studies that have compared the immunity from natural infection to vaccination?” Collins asked. “Most of us have been saying up until now that vaccines are actually better for providing immunity – what does the overall synthesis of the data now say?“

As JTN notes further, those private doubts contrasted sharply with Collins’s earlier public posture, particularly his aggressive dismissal of the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors argued for focused protection rather than universal restrictions and mandates. In the emails, Collins appeared far more circumspect, seeking nuance rather than certainty.

Protect the Public’s Trust has accused the CDC of misrepresenting its own Kentucky study, noting that agency press materials blurred the distinction between vaccination after infection and vaccination versus infection alone. The group filed a formal scientific-integrity complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services over what it called misleading public claims.

Michael Chamberlain, the organization’s director, told the Daily Caller that the emails show officials attempting to “bury what didn’t fit their preferred narrative,” even as Americans relied on foreign research for answers to basic questions about Covid immunity.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump said that people who stormed a Minneapolis church over the past weekend should be jailed, while calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate two local Democratic politicians.

“Just watched footage of the Church Raid in Minnesota by the agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on early Tuesday.

The individuals who appeared at the church “are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”

A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “Justice for Renee Good,” a protester who was shot in Minnesota by an ICE agent as she hit him with her car while trying to escape custody. The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors also leads the local ICE field office overseeing some operations in the Twin Cities area.

Responding to the church incident, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the department is investigating federal civil rights violations who she said were “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”

“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she wrote in a post on social media.

Dhillon said in an interview with the Daily Wire that DOJ prosecutors went to Minneapolis on Monday to investigate the church case, suggesting that the protesters were violating the rights of the church-goers.

“You can have your protest in a park, you can have a march, you can get a permit for a large gathering, but you can’t just go wherever you want and tear things up and disrupt,” she told the outlet. “And that’s what these people did. And so now, people are afraid to go to church. And that is an absolute disgrace in this country.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has also written that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted by the department.

In his social media post, Trump also took aim at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), calling on the DOJ to investigate both in response to the recent unrest in Minnesota.

Both Walz and Omar have been critical of the Trump administration’s operation targeting illegal immigration in Minnesota, with Omar saying last week that the Twin Cities area is “under attack” by the federal government.

“There is no modern precedent for this level of federal overreach, violence, and lawlessness carried out in the name of immigration enforcement,” she said.

Walz also said that he believes Trump is seeking “violence in the streets” with the federal operation, adding that “Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace.” He then said, “Don’t give him what he wants.”

The Epoch Times contacted Walz’s and Omar’s offices for comment on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.