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United States
08/10/2022 The FBI’s handling of the Pennsylvania Republican Perry represents a rare step against a sitting member of Congress. He said this week that the FBI had seized his cell phone. Perry took part in a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with lawmakers in the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, which Perry chairs, during which they discussed strategies to block or delay certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6. The Jan. 6 select panel received testimony from Hutchinson, a former top aide to Meadows who told the select committee that Perry had been supportive of floated plans to call on Trump supporters to march on the Capitol. (Source: Politico)
August 10, 2022 Agents on August 8, Monday, searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which is also a private club, as part of a federal investigation into whether the former president took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence. What prompted the Justice Department to seek authorization to search the estate for classified documents now, months after it was revealed that Trump had taken boxes of materials with him when he left the White House after losing the 2020 election? The Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information since the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year. The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate. There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location. Current FBI Director Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago. Trump repeatedly criticized him, as president. Trump was in New York, a thousand or so miles away, at the time of the search. Trump faces an array of inquiries tied to his conduct in the waning days of his administration. A separate grand jury is investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election - which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol - and it all adds to potential legal peril for Trump as he lays the groundwork for a potential repeat run for the White House. Trump and his allies quickly sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024. Trump, disclosing the search late Monday, asserted that agents had opened a safe at his home, and he described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.” Trump’s Vice President Pence, a potential 2024 rival, tweeted today, “Yesterday’s action undermines public confidence in our system of justice and Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken and he must do so immediately.” (Source: AP)
Wednesday, 8/10/22 Monday, at about 10 a.m. EST, FBI agents and technicians showed up at Trump's Florida home to execute a search warrant to obtain any government-owned documents that might be in the possession of Trump but are required to be delivered to the Archives under the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (In response to the Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents.) The act establishes that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and not a president's private property. The law imposes strict penalties for failure to comply. "Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined" $2,000, up to three years in prison or "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States." A year-and-a-half ago, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not. The former president said that he was returning any official records to the Archives. In February, Archivist Ferriero testified before Congress that the Trump camp had returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives and in those materials, the Archives discovered items "marked as classified national security information." In the past week, Florida magistrate Judge Reinhart in West Palm Beach signed a search warrant allowing the FBI to look for relevant material. A convoy of unmarked black SUVs and a Ryder rental truck filled with about three dozen FBI special agents and technicians entered the gates in the early evening. Trump attorney Halligan was present during the multi-hour search. (Source: NewsWeek)
Mon, Aug 8 2022 Biden authorizes largest yet weapons package for Ukraine, bringing U.S. commitment to $9.8 billion. It includes munitions for long-range weapons and armored medical transport vehicles. The package consists of additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems or HIMARS, 75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition, 20 120 mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition as well as munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems or NASAMS. The HIMARS, manufactured by defense giant Lockheed Martin, are designed to shoot a variety of missiles from a mobile 5-ton truck and have sat high on Ukrainian wish lists. ’The U.S. was not sending HIMARS in this latest package, only ammunition for the system’. The U.S. has thus far provided 16 HIMARS to Ukraine. The Pentagon will also send 1,000 Javelins, hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems, 50 armored medical treatment vehicles, anti-personnel munitions, explosives, demolition munitions and demolition equipment. The weapons come directly from U.S. stockpiles. (Source: CNBC)
Sat, August 6, 2022 It’s like a random number generator. In the first two years of the pandemic, Congress passed three COVID relief packages totaling $190 billion in aid for education systems. But schools were given little guidance on how to effectively use the money to keep their students safe. Instead, they frantically bought up whatever technology they were told could keep their doors open. In August 2020, with COVID-19 outbreaks proliferating and back to school plans shifting, U.S. tech vendors popped up, promising a solution. Companies came out of the woodwork, ready to make a pandemic profit. They were selling thermal imaging cameras and scanners that they said could screen large groups of students for virus-related fevers in real time. They didn’t work. Districts were sold technology by an industry which experts compare to the “wild west,” and how now in many instances, the scanners sit dormant in schools, gathering dust. X.Labs, run by a former fugitive and fraudster wanted in South Africa, and SafeCheck USA, started by two Miami real estate brothers who describe themselves as “power agents,” convinced schools to spend millions of federal funds on devices. Another company, Hikvision, half-owned by the Chinese state, has been widely condemned for supplying cameras for an intelligence program aimed at tracking and detaining the Uyghur population in China. In May of this year, it was reported that the U.S. was moving towards imposing sanctions on Hikvision for human rights abuses, which would be the first of its kind on a Chinese company. The company - along with surveillance manufacturer Dahua, another partly Chinese state-owned surveillance manufacturer whose thermal cameras are in U.S. schools - was banned from use by U.S. federal agencies in 2018 and blacklisted by the Department of Commerce in 2019. The Fayette County Public Schools District in north central Georgia spent nearly $500,000 on Hikvision cameras for its 40,000 student population - which ended up being used for only a year - in October 2020 the scanners were producing a lot of “false positives,” prompting a member of the education board to suggest they “should get a refund.” The security of Hikvision and Dahua’s camera software has been compromised in the past, with potential loopholes for malicious hackers to take control of devices remotely. Dahua admitted their devices were vulnerable to mass hacking. SafeCheck USA was another company that sprang up at the start of the pandemic, founded by brothers Kakon. According to their website, they specialize in luxury real estate, and also led a drug rehabilitation center and a cryptocurrency company. SafeCheck advertised walk-through body temperature scanners that could screen up to 70 people per minute. However: “Thermal imaging systems have not been shown to be accurate when used to take the temperature of multiple people at the same time,” the FDA told. SafeCheck has made nearly $2.2 million in sales across public agencies for 55 schools. The company received shipments from a Chinese company Shenzhen Jinjian Era Technology Co, similarly branded as “SafeAgle. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration did alert the public about the improper use of thermal devices in March 2021. The agency agreed that thermal imaging “is not effective at determining if someone has COVID-19 and should not be used to identify/diagnose individuals that have COVID-19.” SafeCheck’s last sale was in August 2021. The global thermal imaging camera market was valued at $3.16 billion in 2020, and is expected to grow by further $1 billion in the next four years. It seems to be that surveillance companies will constantly pivot to sell their software as a solution to whatever we fear most. Now, with little trace of Feevr, X.Labs has pivoted back to selling weapon detection systems to schools. (Source: Yahoo)
August 5, 2022 Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán yesterday told a crowd of conservatives in Dallas that the future of “Western civilization” is in peril - attacking progressives while imploring right-wing Americans and Hungarians to “know how to fight,” opening the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference. Making frequent attacks on progressives, communists and the “leftist media,” Orbán said the horrors of World War II were the result of European countries abandoning Christian values. “And today’s progressives are planning to do the same,” he said. “They want to give up on Western values and create a new world - a post-Western world. Who is going to stop them if we don’t?” He painted himself as a defender of Christian values against migration from majority Muslim countries. He has also frequently demonized the LGBTQ community. While the cavernous exhibit hall was only about half-full, Orbán received a raucous welcome to the conference. “Welcome to Texas!” one woman shouted as Orbán took the stage. Some of the heaviest applause from the crowd came after Orbán mentioned a clause in the Hungarian constitution that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. “To sum up, the mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our teens alone,” he said. “We decided we don’t need more genders.… Less drag queens, and more Norris. We believe there is no freedom without order. If there is no order, you get killed.” Orbán has become increasingly embraced by American conservatives - he’s a frequent guest of Carlson on Fox News and visited former President Trump in New Jersey before coming to Texas. Some CPAC attendees tried distancing themselves and the American conservative movement from the strongman’s rhetoric. Tolles, 66, is attending the conference with wife, Maggie, who is Filipina. “We’re a mixed race marriage, so a lot depends on how far he goes with that rhetoric.” But Tolles added that he has “a lot of respect” for Orbán because he is trying to preserve European civilization “against the hordes trying to come in.” ’Unfortunately, he saw his political fortunes not in maintaining that early model of his party, but really quite the opposite - to play on society’s fear of immigration, to promote a nationalist view of Hungary or even an emphasis on its Hungarian Christian roots that made many of us uneasy,” Rabbi Baker, the director of International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said. He first met Orbán in Budapest in the early 1990s, before Orbán’s first term as prime minister. “But it gave him success and we see what that has meant.” Baker said Orbán avoids explicit antisemitism, but “he’s often flirted with traditional antisemitic tropes.” “We’ve certainly seen in campaigns the way he’s used Soros as sort of an individual figure to hold up for special attack,” Baker said, referencing the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire who frequently donates to progressive causes. ’It makes many people uneasy to see an international financier shoulder the blame for all the ills society might face.’ Orbán repeated some of those tropes at CPAC yesterday. “Let’s be honest, the most heinous things in modern history were carried out by people who hated Christianity,” he said. “Don’t be afraid calling your enemies by their name. Consider for example Soros … He believes in none of the things that we do, and he has an army at his service.” “He uses his army to force his will on opponents like us. He thinks that what is dear to all of us led to the horrors of the 20th century. But the case is exactly the opposite. Our values save us from repeating history’s mistakes,” Orbán said. After Orbán’s speech, about a half-dozen people held a small protest in the hotel’s atrium, (Source: TheDallasMorningNews)
Fri, August 5, 2022 The "Dark Brandon" vs lame duck debate goes on. A comically sinister cartoon character dubbed "Dark Brandon" started going viral on Twitter this week, invented by depressed leftists, angry that their centrist president was failing to get things done - and added death ray eyes. All of a sudden, mainstream Democrats are embracing "Dark Brandon" as their own, rebranding him to a kind of political terminator. "Dark Brandon cannot be stopped," reads one caption over a portrait of Biden with deeply tanned skin and fiery yellow eyes. Check the headlines: Friday, Biden gets a blockbuster jobs report showing US unemployment back to a half-century low. Monday, Biden announces the United States has killed Zawahiri, the last big name of the 9/11-era Al-Qaeda leadership. A few days before that, Congress passes a $52 billion investment package boosting semiconductor manufacturing. But a large majority of Americans - from left and right - don't think he's on the right track. They blame him for Democratic infighting in Congress, for declaring victory too soon over Covid last year, for the ugly exit from Afghanistan, and for four-decades-high inflation. The poll gives Biden a 35 percent overall approval rating, with just 30 percent on the economy, and only 26 percent believing he is "up to the challenges facing the US." The naysayers include a growing number of Democratic members of Congress. Biden would be a record 86 years old by the end of a second term. "The president intends to run in 2024," Press Secretary Jean-Pierre has repeatedly declared. (Source: Yahoo)
August 5, 2022 Monkeypox is disproportionately affecting men who have sex with men, latest CDC breakdown shows. There were 2,891 cases of monkeypox reported in the United States by July 22, about two months after the country's first case was reported. 94% were in men who reported recent sexual or close intimate contact with another man. More than half (54%) of cases were among Black and Hispanic people, a group that represents about a third (34%) of the general US population. And the share of cases among Black people has grown in recent weeks, according to the CDC analysis. A genital rash was more commonly reported in the current outbreak. It was the most common location for rash (46%), followed by arms (40%), face (38%) and legs (37%). More than a third of cases with available data reported rash in four or more regions. Anyone with a rash consistent with monkeypox should be tested for the virus. A substantial proportion of monkeypox cases have been reported among people with HIV, who may be at higher risk of severe illness. (Source: CNN)
Thu, August 4, 2022 What went wrong with the monkeypox response? Testing was the first thing that went wrong early in the spread of COVID-19 and again has been a problem with monkeypox. Tests for monkeypox initially had to be sent to the CDC for confirmation, drastically limiting the number that could be done. Some people tried for days to be tested, and others with obvious symptoms tested negative, possibly because health care providers aren't used to having to collect samples from skin lesions. Clinicians still have to get their state department of health to authorize every monkeypox test. Two smallpox vaccines were developed years ago and approved for use against monkeypox. The federal government has a large supply of one, ACAM2000, but that vaccine carries severe side effects and risks, so few doses have been administered. Officials have relied on Jynneos, a vaccine that seems to work well with few problems, though it has never been tried before during an actual monkeypox outbreak. The government did not immediately order Jynneos doses released. Officials apparently were afraid the doses might be needed someday against smallpox instead of recognizing that they were needed immediately against monkeypox. The government has since ordered more doses, and more than 1 million have been made available, but demand still seems to outstrip supply in many places. More doses won't be available for months. Similarly, an antiviral treatment called TPOXX that appears to work well against monkeypox has been tied up in bureaucracy and is difficult for patients to access. Officials have alternated between saying there's no problem and blaming the CDC. What will happen over Labor Day, when Black Gay Pride is celebrated in Atlanta? If action isn't taken quickly to avert a superspreader event, you might expect to see the virus seed itself across the rural South. The Biden administration announced this week the establishment of a National Monkeypox Response Team with both logistical and public health experience - the fire department is getting organized 2½ months after the fire has started. (Source: USAToday)
Thursday, August 04, 2022 Sen. Paul, the Republican ranking member of a Homeland Security subcommittee that focuses on emerging threats and spending oversight, convened a congressional hearing yesterday to scrutinize gain-of-function research - a risky method used to manipulate pathogens that make viruses more transmissible or dangerous. Paul has accused the National Institutes of Health of funding such research that could have led to the global coronavirus pandemic. “I don’t think the people doing the research are able to adequately and objectively regulate themselves,” he said. “I don’t think an absolute ban is what we want. We want better oversight of this.” Paul believes Covid-19 was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Yesterday, Paul brought three scientists before his subcommittee to explain gain of function, its risks and rewards. Ebright, a microbiology laboratory director at Rutgers University, Quay, the CEO of Atossa Therapeutics and Esvelt, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, all agreed that gain of function research needs to be better defined and have more oversight. Ebright said a main reason gain-of-function research is performed is because it is fast, easy and attracts funding, but stopped short of saying it should be completely eliminated. Quay, on the other hand, said it would be appropriate for the U.S. to halt all gain-of-function research, at least temporarily. Besides Paul, only four other Republican senators attended the hearing to question the scientists. No Democratic senator appeared. “Gain of function research has the potential to unleash a global pandemic that threatens the lives of millions, yet this is the first time the issue’s been discussed in a congressional committee,” Paul said. He acknowledged the hearing was the beginning of a long process to produce legislation. He said he welcomed other scientists, including virologists, to offer future testimony that could produce bipartisan legislation. (Source: McClatchyDC)
04.08.2022 The US-based Free Buryatia Foundation was founded in March 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine by opponents of the war in Buryatia and the global Buryatia diaspora. It advocates for Buryatia's democratic self-determination, (Source: DW)
Thursday, 4 August 2022 Ukrainian top intelligence official reveals US involvement in missile strikes against Russia. Today, a spokesman for Russia’s defense ministry, Lt. Gen Konashenkov, stated that “contrary to White House and Pentagon claims, [the US] is directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine.” Konashenkov’s statement came in response to Monday’s interview by the British Telegraph with the Major General Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service. In the interview, Skibitsky acknowledged that Ukraine was not only using US-manufactured and -delivered HIMARS long-range missiles to target Russian fuel and ammunition depots and battlefield headquarters in eastern Ukraine, but that Ukraine was also relying on 'real-time information' in these strikes. The US is directly involved in the decision-making process for Ukrainian military strikes on Russian targets: The Telegraph paraphrased Skibitsky as saying that before every strike, discussions took place between the US and Ukraine 'that would allow Washington to stop any potential attacks if they were unhappy with the intended target.' In his statement, Konashenkov declared that this represented an official recognition by Ukraine that “the Biden administration [that] is directly responsible for all rocket attacks approved by Kyiv on residential areas and civilian infrastructure facilities in settlements of Donbas and other regions that caused mass deaths of civilians.” He added that the Russian military “has marked it and will keep in mind this official confession.” Following Skibitsky’s provocative revelations, the Pentagon issued a statement, merely declaring that the US was providing Ukraine with 'detailed, time-sensitive information to help them understand the threats they face and defend their country against Russian aggression.' The US involvement in the imperialist proxy war against Russia has become ever more overt and provocative in recent months. After ramming through a record $40 billion for weapons for Ukraine in Congress, on top of billions of direct military aid pledged by the White House to Ukraine since February 24 alone, the US began delivering HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) to Ukraine in late May. They are now being used for a major offensive by the Ukrainian army, which is seeking to reconquer parts of southern Ukraine that have been occupied by Russia. In July, a Pentagon spokesman refused to preclude that these missiles would be used to attack the Russian-built Kerch Bridge, which connects the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea with the Russian mainland. Since then, the US has publicly acknowledged that it is considering plans to send fighter jets to Ukraine, a move that, as US President Biden stated just a few months ago, could ’start World War III.’ The statements by Skibitsky to a leading British newspaper and the marked absence of an explicit denial by the Pentagon mark yet another major provocation of Washington against Russia. Skibitsky’s interview was published the same day as the first grain shipment from Ukraine since the start of the NATO-provoked war left the Black Sea city of Odessa, heading for the port of Tripoli, Lebanon. The ship’s departure marked the beginning of a 120-day deal brokered by the UN and Turkey and signed by Russia and Ukraine in July. A Joint Coordination Center (JCC) located in Istanbul is charged with overseeing the export of Ukrainian grain throughout the 120-day timeframe. The White House has been conspicuously absent from the negotiations around the deal with the US press insisting that it had no prospect of succeeding. (Source: WSWS)
Aug. 3, 2022 Eli Lilly & Co. said it plans to begin commercial sales of its Covid-19 monoclonal antibody treatment to states, hospitals and other healthcare providers beginning the week of Aug. 15t, as the federal government’s supply of the drug is nearly depleted. It will likely be the first test of whether the vaccines and treatments would remain accessible if shifted to a commercial market. Previously, Lilly sold all of its Covid-19 antibody doses for use in the U.S. via contracts with the federal government. But the government will exhaust its supply of Lilly’s Covid-19 antibody treatment, bebtelovimab - which was introduced in 2022 and has held up against the more transmissible Omicron variant and its BA.5 subvariant - as early as the week of Aug. 22. Bebtelovimab is authorized to treat mild to moderate Covid-19 in nonhospitalized people age 12 and older who are at high risk for severe disease, when the antiviral treatments Paxlovid and Veklury are unavailable or aren’t clinically appropriate for a patient. It is typically given via intravenous injection by a medical provider. Lilly’s list price for bebtelovimab is $2,100 per dose. In June, Lilly agreed to supply an additional 150,000 doses of bebtelovimab to the U.S. government for about $275 million. That was expected to meet demand through late August. The Biden administration had used congressional pandemic rescue funds to cover Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for people without health coverage, but the initiative’s funding ran out in spring. Eight percent of Americans lacked health insurance as of 2022. Without new appropriations from Congress, the government lacks funds to purchase more doses from Lilly, too. Lilly booked $1.47 billion in global sales of Covid antibodies in the first quarter of 2022, following $2.24 billion in sales for full-year 2021. The seven-day average of new hospital admissions for Covid-19 was 6,370 for the week ending July 29, up from 1,438 for the week ending April 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirty-one percent of people age 50 or older. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
Tuesday, August 2, (2022) The US announced a new tranche of weapons for Ukraine’s forces worth $550m, including ammunition for rocket launchers and artillery guns. The package will include more ammunition for the high mobility advanced rocket systems otherwise known as HIMARS. The assistance includes 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition. (Source: AlJazeera)
August 1, 2022 It was an intelligence operation. Rogan: Epstein may have been CIA or Mossad spy who was part of a plot to collect sensitive information about the rich and powerful. They were bringing in people and compromising them, to influence their opinions and the way they expressed those opinions. “And I don’t know why they would want to do that with scientists, which is really strange to me,” Rogan added. In 2020, Harvard found that the university accepted more than $9 million from Epstein during the decade leading up to his 2008 sex crimes conviction in Florida state court, but barred him from making further donations after that point. It concluded that Epstein visited the Cambridge, Mass., campus more than 40 times after his conviction, including as recently as 2018. Nowak, a Harvard professor who had close ties to Epstein and who allegedly gave him an office on campus, was disciplined by the school. The former director of MIT’s famous Media Lab, Ito, resigned in 2019 amid uproar over his financial connections to Epstein. Epstein allegedly assaulted dozens of girls, some as young as 14 years old. His madam, Maxwell, 60, was sentenced last month to 20 years in federal prison for procuring young girls in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. Maxwell’s late father was rumored to have had ties with the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. ’Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019’. Rogan's podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience," commands an audience of some 11 million listeners. (Source: TheNewYorkPost)
Mon, August 1, 2022 More people are catching coronavirus a second time, heightening long COVID risk, experts say. According to a preprint study examining U.S. veterans, of which Al-Aly was the lead author, getting infected twice or more "contributes to additional risks of all-cause mortality, hospitalization and adverse health outcomes" in various organ systems, and can additionally worsen risk for diabetes, fatigue and mental health disorders. Another report, observing triple-vaccinated Italian healthcare workers who weren't hospitalized for COVID-19, found that two or three doses of vaccine were associated with a lower prevalence of long COVID. The official case tallies are probably vast undercounts, given that so many at-home tests are being used, and that could suggest that the burden of long COVID in subsequent months will be hard to predict. (Source: LosAngelesTimes)
1 August 2022 Pelosi's plane, a C-40 B/C plane is the military's version of the Boeing 737-700 business jet. The speaker's first stop was in Hawaii, then on to Guam landing at Anderson Air Force Base before arriving in Singapore today morning. (Source: DailyMail)
Some comments: 'Guess Nancy and Joe are neck deep in Chinese yuan they now need to pay it back. What better way than to create a reason for China to invade Taiwan.';
'Modern China is the USA,s and Britains creation. Decades training it's students, allowing China to buy technology companies, and outsourcing everything. Now you pay the price'
August 1, 2022 Aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and big deck amphibious ships USS America (LHA-6) and USS Tripoli (LHA-7), with Marine F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters embarked, are operating in the vicinity of Taiwan, on the edge of the South China Sea ahead of a Western Pacific visit from U.S. House Speaker Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) to the region. Today, Japan-based Reagan is in the Philippine Sea after transiting the San Bernadino Strait in July 30 following a port visit to Singapore and operating in the South China Sea. Japan-based America is in the East China Sea. Its F-35Bs were not grounded as part of the ongoing ejection seat problems. California-based Tripoli is in just south of Okinawa. Tripoli has been embarked with up to 20 F-35Bs, while America routinely deploys with Marine F-35Bs. Pelosi arrived in Singapore today as part of a congressional delegation to the region after a stop in Hawaii that included a brief with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Her official itinerary did not include Taiwan. China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and discourages governments from dealing with Taipei directly. Pelosi would be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. (Source: USNINews)
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