Journalism kept me away from the fediverse, but I'm back with my final story of 2023 for Al Jazeera:
#Ethiopia's acquiring of cheap drones from the likes of the #UAE & #Turkey has led to an uptick of drone strike massacres of civilians in Ethiopia's Amhara region, where rebel militia & government troops have been engaged in fierce fighting since August.
Spoke to eyewitnesses of a Nov 30 strike, where an ambulance was obliterated, killing 5 including medical staff.
3 fmr #UnitedStates foreign policy ofcls in Trump's admin met w/ Benjamin Netanyahu & other public figures in #Israel on Mon….
The delegation was comprised of Robert O'Brien, who served as Trump's 4th & final #NationalSecurity adviser, as well as fmr Ambassador to the #UAE John Rakolta & fmr Ambassador to #Switzerland Ed McMullen….
Michael Szafranski, coconspirator in billion-dollar Rothstein Ponzi scheme, now heads Kushner Companies Florida acquisitions and is on Surfside’s planning and zoning board - overseeing controversial plans for UAE's Damac to develop collapsed Surfside site.
Szafranski was a key player in the $1.3-billion fraud - he worked for investors as an “independent verifier” while secretly receiving payments from Rothstein.
Members of the Russian Army, in particular military pilots, continue to flee Russia. Under the pretext of a vacation, a pilot of an aviation squadron in the Russian Guard named Gavrichenko and his family went on vacation to Dubai.
In the UAE, he went straight to the American embassy, where he declared his reluctance to fight against Ukraine and his readiness to cooperate with American intelligence services
2020: #TrumpCampaign Adviser Pleads Guilty to Child Porn, Sex Trafficking
An informal adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign who testified in the Mueller probe pleaded guilty Monday to charges of child sex trafficking and possessing child pornography.
by Brandi Buchman
January 13, 2020
"Another of [#GeorgeNader’s] meetings that caught the special counsel’s eye was Nader’s January 2017 gathering in the paradisiacal #Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
"There, Nader was joined again by bin Zayed [#UAE’s crown prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.]. But this time in attendance was #ErikPrince, founder of the security company #Blackwater, and Russian President Vladimir #Putin’s ally #KirillDmitriev, head of #Russia’s $10 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
"Though Prince told Mueller the meeting in the Seychelles was happenstance, Nader testified the meeting was planned and that the subject discussed was how to create diplomatic back channels between the #Trump team and #Moscow."
An initiative at Africa’s first climate summit to boost production of the continent’s carbon credit program by nearly 20 times by 2030 brought pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars....
The BRICS group of nations has decided to invite six countries - Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - to become new members of the bloc, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.
The #UK government said Wednesday it will back legislation banning foreign state ownership of British #newspapers and magazines, a move that could upend a planned takeover by a United Arab Emirates-led consortium of the #TelegraphMediaGroup.
The record-breaking rain that recently fell over the United Arab Emirates and Dubai was driven partly by climate change, a team of 21 scientists and researchers found. The extreme weather was 10-40% more intense than what locals would normally see in a typical El Niño year and resulted in around two dozen deaths. CNN tells us more: https://flip.it/gTpejq #Science#ClimateChange#Dubai#UAE#GlobalWarming
Russian media claims server and storage supply has returned to pre-sanctions levels despite ongoing restrictions.
The lion's share of this influx likely came with help from Chinese distributors, whose willingness to send anything into Russia has contributed 89% of the processors used in the country today.
US calls on #UAE, others to stop supporting #Sudan factions (how can the US credibly lecture the UAE, when it sends billions to Israel [a warring party] ?) @sudan@uae
Green groups skeptical as Africa Climate Summit raises hundreds of millions in carbon credits (www.ecowatch.com)
An initiative at Africa’s first climate summit to boost production of the continent’s carbon credit program by nearly 20 times by 2030 brought pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars....
BRICS invites six countries (Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, UAE) to be new members (www.reuters.com)
The BRICS group of nations has decided to invite six countries - Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - to become new members of the bloc, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.