Link back to the discussion thread.

Europe

  • European Union leaders set to grant Ukraine candidate status Seattle Times

It’s not gonna move off that candidacy status for a long, long time.

European Union leaders on Thursday are set to grant Ukraine candidate status to join the 27-nation bloc, a first step in a long and unpredictable journey toward full membership that could take many years to achieve.

Making the war-torn country a contender now seems to be a done deal after leaders were initially divided on how fast they could move to embrace the war-torn country’s bid that was launched only a few days after Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24.

According to several EU diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity before the summit in Brussels, Ukraine will receive the unanimous approval that is required for the launch of discussions.

The EU’s 27 nations have been united in backing Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, adopting unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow. However, leaders were initially divided on how quickly the EU should move to accept Ukraine as a member, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark among the most skeptical.

But Ukraine’s bid got a boost last week when the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, gave its seal of approval based on Ukraine’s answers to a questionnaire received in April and early May.

Ukraine received another shot in the arm when the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania visited the country and vowed to back its candidacy.

Russia

  • Vladimir Putin says Russia’s trade with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa has jumped 38% amid sanctions and war in Ukraine Business Insider

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that trade with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa jumped 38% in the first three months of the year, despite “politically motivated sanctions.”

Trade volume with those four countries — which along with Russia make up the so-calls BRICS countries — totaled $45 billion in that time, he said.

“Russian oil supplies to China and India are growing noticeably,” Putin said in a video stream to the BRICS Business Summit.

  • Indian retail chains may open in Russia RT

Talks are underway regarding the launch of Indian retail store chains in Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday while addressing a BRICS business forum.

“Contacts between Russian business circles and the business community of the BRICS countries are being activated. For example, negotiations are underway to open Indian retail chain stores in Russia, to increase the share of Chinese cars, equipment and machinery in our market. Russia’s presence in [BRICS] countries is also expanding,” Putin stated.

  • Russian oil tankers get India safety cover via Dubai company Reuters

India is providing safety certification for dozens of ships managed by a subsidiary of top Russian shipping group Sovcomflot, official data showed, enabling oil exports to India and elsewhere after Western certifiers withdrew their services due to global sanctions against Moscow.

Certification by the Indian Register of Shipping (IRClass), one of the world’s top classification companies, provides a final link in the paperwork chain - after insurance coverage - needed to keep state-owned Sovcomflot’s tanker fleet afloat and delivering Russian crude oil to overseas markets.

Data compiled from the IRClass website shows that it has certified more than 80 ships managed by SCF Management Services (Dubai) Ltd, a Dubai-based entity listed as a subsidiary on Sovcomflot’s website.

An Indian shipping source familiar with the certification process said most of Sovcomflot’s vessels had now migrated to IRClass, via the Dubai arm.

  • Russia slams ‘hostile’ US move RT

Russia’s foreign ministry has described as “hostile” and “provocative” Washington’s decision not to let a “humanitarian” flight pick up Russian diplomats who had been ordered to leave the US.

In a statement published on the ministry’s website on Wednesday, and authored by its spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, Moscow warned that the US government’s latest move was yet another blow to Russian-American bilateral relations, “which are already in a sorry state.”

According to the official, Washington refused to issue an entry permit for a special flight which was supposed to bring Russian diplomats and their families home – a move Zakharova branded “hostile.”

  • With bond deadlines looming, Russia days away from default Al Jazeera

Russia faces yet another bond payment test this week, with just days remaining before it potentially slides into its first foreign default in a century.

Three interest transfers totaling almost $400 million are due on Thursday and Friday, but more pressing is a Sunday-night deadline on previous missed payments from late May.

Those funds — about $100 million of bond coupons — are stuck due to international sanctions, and the grace period to find a solution expires at the end of the day on June 26. At that point, Russia will effectively be in default, unless it somehow gets payments through to sufficient holders of the debt.

It’s not that the government lacks the will or the money to pay. Billions of dollars of energy revenue pour into Kremlin coffers each week.

Rather, it’s failed to meet the deadlines because mounting sanctions are cutting off avenues to transfer the cash.

The goal in the White House is to punish the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine by sealing its pariah status in the market for decades to come with the country’s first foreign default since the Bolshevik revolution more than a century ago.

Russia argues that it’s being forced into default, and tried to find workarounds. It said its obligations will be deemed to have been fulfilled once payment is made in rubles, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin setting out a mechanism for servicing the bonds. Earlier, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had said the government would transfer rubles that could then be converted into foreign currencies.

“We’ve done everything we can to lead the horse to water, but it’s not up to us whether it wants to drink or not,” Siluanov said last week.

  • Canada working to return Russian gas turbines RT

Canada is exploring ways to return crucial parts for Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which are currently stuck in the country due to sanctions, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday citing Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson.

“We want to respect the sanctions because the sanctions were put into place for a reason. That being said, the intent of the sanctions was never to cause significant pain to Germany, which is one of our closest friends and allies. So, we are very seized with this issue,” Wilkinson told the news outlet.

“We are talking to Germany, trying to find a pathway through which we can actually enable the flow of gas. There may be different options that we can look at,” he stated, adding that Ottawa is negotiating with Berlin on ways to return the equipment.

Bulgaria

  • EU member ousts pro-NATO government RT

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov lost a no-confidence vote in the parliament on Wednesday, after a junior partner in his tenuous ruling coalition joined the opposition. The Harvard graduate and former Canadian citizen denounced his critics as Russian agents beholden to organized crime and vowed to continue fighting to make Bulgaria, what he called, a “normal European country.”

Of the 239 members in the parliament in Sofia, 123 voted for Petkov’s ouster in what Bulgarian state media described as the first successful no-confidence vote in the country’s modern history. Only 116 backed the PM, with no abstentions.

After the vote, Petkov accused the main opposition party, Revival, of being a conduit for “Russian interests” and said it had been his honor to lead a government that sought to root out corruption and organized crime.

“We will continue to fight so that one day we can have a Bulgaria without the mafia, a normal successful European country,” Petkov said in his parting remarks.

United Kingdom

  • Britain’s Ineos signs 20-yr LNG deal with Sempra Infrastructure Reuters

Britain’s INEOS Energy, part of INEOS Group, has signed an agreement with U.S. firm Sempra Infrastructure for the supply of 1.4 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from North America for 20 years, it said on Wednesday.

Germany

  • German government warns Russia against retaliatory measures over Kaliningrad dispute CNN

The German government has warned Russia not to take countermeasures over the dispute of freight traffic to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

“We call on Russia not to take any measures that violate international law,” German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said.

He said that Lithuania had taken these actions within the European Union framework of sanctions on Russia. Only certain goods are affected by the sanctions, and no people have been sanctioned.

  • Germany faces gas supply ‘crisis,’ declares alarm level Seattle Times

Germany activated the second phase of its three-stage emergency plan for natural gas supplies Thursday, saying Europe’s biggest economy faces a “crisis” and warning that storage targets for the winter are at risk due to dwindling deliveries from Russia.

The government said the decision to raise the level to “alarm” follows the cuts to Russian gas flows made since June 14 and surging energy prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. The third and highest stage is the “emergency” level.

“The situation is serious, and winter will come,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement. “The reduction in gas supplies is an economic attack on us by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” he said. “We will defend ourselves against this. But our country is going to have to go down a stony path now.”

Lithuania

  • Lithuania ready to expand Kaliningrad blockade – president RT

Vilnius is ready to expand the list of goods banned from transit to Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad should the European Union introduce new sanctions against Moscow, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Wednesday. The country is also ready to face any potential retaliatory measures Russia might introduce, he told Reuters in an interview.

“We are ready and we are prepared for unfriendly actions from Russia, such as disconnection from the BRELL [power grid] system, or others,” Nauseda said.

Italy

  • Arming Ukraine Exposes Divisions in Italy WSJ

Divisions over military aid for Ukraine have triggered a split in Italy’s biggest parliamentary party, reflecting ambivalence in the Southern European country about how deeply to get involved in Kyiv’s resistance to Russian forces.

The 5 Star Movement, an ideologically eclectic populist party that once channeled Italians’ widespread frustration with their political class, split on Tuesday night as dozens of lawmakers defected to a new group led by Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who supports continued military aid for Ukraine.

Mr. Di Maio attacked the 5 Star Movement’s leadership around Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s former prime minister, for calling into question Italy’s policy of sending arms to Kyiv. “Faced with the atrocities that Putin is committing in Ukraine, we could not continue to demonstrate uncertainty,” Mr. Di Maio said late Tuesday, explaining his decision to leave the 5 Star Movement, which he used to lead. “We had to decide on which side of history we stand: on the side of Ukraine, a country attacked, or on the side of Russia, the aggressor.”

Mr. Conte, who has said Italy shouldn’t send any more weapons to Ukraine and instead promote dialogue, countered that Mr. Di Maio was looking for a pretext to split from the party.

Spain

  • In world’s first, Spain’s Seville to name and classify heatwaves Reuters

Seville has introduced a pioneering system to name and classify frequent heatwaves that affect the city in Spain’s arid south, which will tie meteorological forecasts to health impacts, Seville Mayor Antonio Munoz said.

The pilot project comprises three categories and will alert the population up to five days in advance of a heat event, he said in a statement late on Tuesday.

“We are the first city in the world to take a step that will help us plan and take measures when this type of weather event happens,” the mayor said.

Asia and Oceania

China

  • China’s Xi vows ‘more forceful’ tools to achieve this year’s economic targets CNBC

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a rare statement Wednesday about his country’s aims to achieve its economic goals for the year.

Investment analysts have cut their forecasts for China’s GDP growth to well below the official target after stringent Covid controls restricted business activity in the last few months. Government stimulus has been relatively muted so far.

“We will step up macroeconomic policy adjustment, and adopt more forceful measures to deliver the economic and social development goals for the whole year and minimize the impact of COVID-19,” Xi said Wednesday, according to an English-language state media readout.

He did not share details on what kind of measures would be used to support growth. Rather than “more forceful,” Chinese text of the speech published by state media described forthcoming measures as “more effective,” according to a CNBC translation.

  • China’s Xi Jinping Takes Swipe at U.S. ‘Position of Strength’ at BRICS Newsweek

Chinese leader Xi Jinping dismissed as folly President Joe Biden’s intention to ensure that the United States competes with China from a “position of strength.”

“In the past century, humanity has gone through the scourge of two world wars and the dark shadow of the Cold War. The tragedies of the past tell us that hegemony, group politics and bloc confrontation bring no peace or security; they only lead to wars and conflicts,” Xi told the event, which was attended by representatives and business groups from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“The Ukraine crisis is another wake-up call for all in the world. It reminds us that blind faith in the so-called ‘position of strength’ and attempts to expand military alliances and seek one’s own security at the expense of others will only land oneself in a security dilemma,” he said, in a direct reference to Biden’s policy directive to compete with China “from a position of strength by building back better at home and working with our allies and partners.”

Japan

  • 77 years after battle’s end, Okinawa wants US base reduced ABC

Okinawa marked the 77th anniversary Thursday of the end of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, with the governor calling for a further reduction of the U.S. military presence there as local fears grow that the southern Japanese islands will become embroiled in regional military tension.

Bangladesh

  • Bangladesh is trying to secure wheat from Russia as India stops exports: Reuters, citing sources CNBC

Bangladesh is trying to secure wheat supplies from Russia in a government-to-government deal after it’s biggest supplier India banned exports of the grain last month to contain local prices, government and trade officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

The supply deal with Russia, the world’s biggest wheat exporter, could help Dhaka in meeting its needs below the elevated global prices, industry officials said.

Bangladesh is holding a virtual meeting with Russia on Thursday to finalize the deal, said a senior official with Bangladesh’s food ministry.

“We’ll initially seek at least 200,000 tonnes of wheat from Russia,” said the official, who declined to be named.

Laos

  • In Laos, Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh Is In Trouble The Diplomat

Phankham Viphavanh hasn’t had the best of times since becoming prime minister of Laos in March 2021. When he took over, Laos had officially recorded only around 50 cases of COVID-19. By the end of the year, it was up to more than 110,000. Vaccination is plodding. The Nikkei COVID-19 Recovery Index ranked Laos as the worst performer among more than 120 countries.

For Laos, 2022 was supposed to be the year of economic recovery. Instead, inflation was up to 12.8 percent in May, an 18-year high and one of the highest in Asia. The local currency, the kip, has collapsed in value. This time last year, around 9,400 kip would buy you one U.S. dollar. Today, it trades for almost 15,000. Much of the country has faced petrol shortages for months. Wages are stagnating. There hasn’t been a minimum wage hike since 2018. Growth will likely be around 3.8 percent this year, the World Bank reckons, although that depends greatly on how the government deals with the most serious issue: debt. Moody’s Investors Service has warned that Laos is on the “brink of default,” as the agency downgraded Laos’ credit rating yet again on June 14th to Caa3.

Ordinary Laotians are angry. The communist government, which offered relatively little financial assistance to people during the pandemic, has blustered. Phankham’s cabinet is perceived as having acted too slowly; it only created a special economic task force on June 6, for instance. It’s also accused of badly communicating the crisis to the public. As I wrote in Asia Times earlier this month, don’t expect the crumbling of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP), the communist party, or Laos’ one-party system anytime soon. But internal politics are heating up.

Speaking to Bloomberg last week, Harrison Cheng, an associate director at Control Risks, speculated that “if the LPRP were to try and appease the public to buy time until the economic crisis wanes,” it might “sacrifice some top-level officials, ministers, or even Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh.” As expected, the cabinet was reshuffled last weekend. Sonexay Sitphaxay was removed as governor of the Bank of the Lao PDR, the central bank, and Khampheng Xaysompheng departed the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. They were sent packing to the relatively trivial positions of ministers in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Philippines

  • Low output, blocked imports spark sugar shortage fears Inquirer

The sugar supply situation in the Philippines has taken a turn for the worse as the industry’s government regulator warned of a shortage in raw sugar, with manufacturers now forced to source the product locally, competing for already limited supplies in the market.

  • No shortage of flour in Philippines, but expect prices to soar — flour millers Philstar

Singapore

  • Singapore’s core inflation rises to 3.6% in May, highest in more than 13 years Channel News Asia

DPRK

  • North Korea holds party meeting to discuss ‘crucial, urgent’ tasks for military buildup Asia News

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened the first meeting of the Central Military Commission in one year to discuss and decide on “crucial and urgent tasks” to bolster its military, the state media reported Wednesday.

The third enlarged meeting of the eighth Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea kicked off Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. The first and second meetings were held respectively in February and June 2021.

New Zealand

  • New Zealand records largest ever bleaching of sea sponges The Guardian

New Zealand is experiencing the largest bleaching of sea sponges ever recorded, scientists say, after extreme ocean temperatures turned millions of the aquatic creatures white.

The discovery comes after researchers raised the alarm in May, when sea sponges off New Zealand’s southern coastline were found bleached for the first time.

Initially, researchers estimated hundreds of thousands of the sponges had been bleached – but over the past month, scientists conducted investigations at coastlines around the country, and found that millions – possibly tens of millions – had been transformed bone-white.

Middle East

Iran

  • Iran-Israel conflict can’t be solved through diplomacy: advisor Tehran Times

Larijani, the former Iranian parliament speaker, made the remarks while attending a book unveiling ceremony held at The National Library and Archives of Iran on Wednesday morning.

Larijani said Israel’s conflict with Iran is a strategic issue and Bergman [the author of the book] points to this issue. “As a result, this issue cannot be resolved through diplomacy. The Imam [Khomeini] and the Islamic Revolution really changed the map of the Middle East, and Bergman’s argument is that the Islamic Revolution is a major obstacle to the realization of the demands of the United States and Israel in the region,” he continued.

  • Iran’s Oil Exports Surge In June Oil Price

Iraq

  • For Iraqis a sweltering summer of ‘hell’ has begun Inquirer

Battered by decades of conflict that has sapped its infrastructure, Iraq is struggling with droughts, repeated sandstorms, desertification and a drop in some river levels.

Chronic power cuts are exacerbated in the summer, and only those who can afford private generators are able to keep their fridges or air conditioning units running. […] in the capital Baghdad, temperatures have already topped 50 Celsius — in the shade.

Israel/Palestine

  • US helps Israel to prepare for military ‘escalation’ RT

Israel and the United States have carried out joint military drills aiming to coordinate air defenses, intelligence and logistics in the event fighting breaks out with armed groups in southern Lebanon, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Conducted over the last week and overseen by US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the exercises aimed to prepare both countries for “a military escalation on Israel’s northern front,” according to the outlet.

However, while CENTCOM and the IDF gamed out a number of scenarios, the two sides did not discuss the possibility of “active US involvement” in Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, a militant group and political organization based in southern Lebanon which has clashed on and off with Israeli forces since its founding in the 1980s.

Africa

Eritrea

On June 20th, Eritrea celebrates Martyr’s Day, in honor of those who fell in the 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia, from 1961-1991, and those who have fallen in the ensuing off-and-on war with Ethiopia’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

A former Italian colony, Eritrea aspired to independence after the Italians suffered defeat in World War II, but it was instead drawn into the Cold War politics that dominated the Horn of Africa—and most of the world—once it was over. To reward Ethiopia for its service during the war, the United States pressured the United Nations to give Eritrea to Emperor Haile Selassie to administer and then to annex in 1962. In 1961, a group of students, professionals, and college professors founded the Eritrean Liberation Front and began the longest war for independence in Africa, in which ten percent of Eritrea’s population are thought to have died.

The United States supported Ethiopia from the end of World War II until 1974, when Emperor Selassie fell to the socialist revolution led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. In 1991, Mengistu’s government in turn fell to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and a coalition of rebel forces, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which was led and dominated by the TPLF. Shortly thereafter, the EPLF renamed itself the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and declared its independence from Ethiopia, which was formalized by a referendum in 1993.

The TPLF, through EPRDF, then deployed and exacerbated ethnic division to rule Ethiopia autocratically, behind a thin coalition veneer, from 1991 until 2018, when they were ousted by widespread protest that brought Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to power on April 2 that year. The new prime minister quickly arranged a peace summit with Eritrea, just three months later, on July 8-9, 2018, and it became clear that Ethiopia’s war with Eritrea had in fact been a war between Eritrea and the TPLF, whose expansionist ambitions included seizing a large swathe of Eritrea, including its Red Sea ports, and parts of Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar Regions, to create a “Greater Tigray .”

On November 3, 2020, TPLF troops within the Ethiopian army attacked the army’s command base and began a battle to reclaim power in Addis Ababa or, short of that, to secede and fulfill its territorial “Greater Tigray” ambitions by annexing the northwest corner of Ethiopia, including a piece of its Sudan border, and most of Eritrea’s Red Sea coast.

However, though it’s holding on in Tigray Region, the TPLF has made no territorial gains. It has in fact lost Ethiopia’s northwest corner, including the traditionally Amhara districts of Welkait, Tsegede, Humera, and Tselemst i, which it annexed after 1991.

It has gained no territorial ground in Eritrea and it’s all but impossible to imagine that it will, given that Eritreans sustained a 30-year war of independence, and have already fought off another two decades of TPLF aggression.

South Africa

  • The EU Is Buying More South African Coal Than Ever Oil Price

North America

United States

  • U.S. Economy Could Be Declared a Recession Within Weeks: Reagan Adviser Newsweek

Art Laffer, a former economic adviser in Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration, said on Wednesday that the U.S. economy could be considered in a recession based on the upcoming second-quarter numbers on gross domestic product (GDP).

  • Companies are passing higher costs to shoppers at the fastest pace since the 1950s, study finds Business Insider

Several factors, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to supply chain snags, are fueling today’s sky-high inflation. Yet new research from the Roosevelt Institute finds that the buck stops at US companies, and that firms are charging Americans the most they ever have.

Inflation is closely tied to companies raising their prices, starting with an uptick in the costs that go into companies' operations, ranging from pricier materials for manufacturers to higher rents for retailers. Affected businesses then raise consumer prices to make up for those costlier inputs. Differences between prices and costs are known as markups, and in the pandemic-era economy, those gaps are wider than ever.

Both markups and profits among 3,698 US-operating firms soared last year to the highest levels since the 1950s, the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani said in a June brief. The average markup reached 1.72 in 2021, meaning the typical price companies offered to their customers was 72% higher than companies' costs. That’s up from an average of 1.56 through the 2010s, or 56% above marginal cost.

  • Boeing expects supply chain problems to last through most of 2023 Reuters

Boeing expects supply chain problems to persist almost until the end of 2023, led by labour shortages at mid-tier and smaller suppliers, partly due to the faster-than-expected return of demand, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

Boeing said last month that production of its 737 aircraft had been slowed by shortages of a single type of wiring connector, while some of its airline customers had been forced to cancel flights due to a lack of staff in the post-pandemic recovery.

  • EIA: US Refining Capacity Sinks To Near Decade Low Oil Price

Operable refining capacity in the United States hit a nearly decade low in 2022, the EIA’s latest Refining Capacity Report showed on Tuesday.

U.S. refining capacity fell this year to 17.94 million barrels per day as of January 1, according to the latest EIA data—down from 18.09 million bpd on January 1 last year. U.S. refining capacity is now the lowest it’s been since 2014.

  • Records to topple in Southeast amid ‘dangerous’ heat near 105 degrees WaPo

A stifling heat dome has been baking much of the southern U.S. for about two weeks now, and it’s showing no signs of relaxing its grip on the Lower 48. An intense pulse of heat is setting records in the Southeast, with highs near 105 degrees in parts of Georgia and the Florida Panhandle and heat index values topping 110.

The National Weather Service has hoisted heat advisories across swaths of the South, with 56 million Americans in zones that will peak in the triple digits.

  • Lake Mead nears dead pool status as water levels hit another historic low NBC

Lake Mead’s water levels this week dropped to historic lows, bringing the nation’s largest reservoir less than 150 feet away from “dead pool” — when the reservoir is so low that water cannot flow downstream from the dam.

Lake Mead’s water level on Wednesday was measured at 1,044.03 feet, its lowest elevation since the lake was filled in the 1930s. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet — a possibility still years away — Lake Mead would reach dead pool, carrying enormous consequences for millions of people across Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico.

  • Biden administration leans on Tesla for guidance in renewable fuel policy reform Reuters

I can’t wait until we have solar panels that are half as efficient as normal ones and also spontaneously explode.

U.S. President Joe Biden rarely mentions electric car maker Tesla Inc in public. But privately his administration has leaned on the company to help craft a new policy to allow electric vehicles (EVs) to benefit from the nation’s lucrative renewable fuel subsidies, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.

  • The U.S. door swings open to Ukrainians WaPo

The Biden administration has embarked on a sizable experiment in admitting Ukrainians who have fled Vladimir Putin’s scorched-earth campaign to the United States. That tens of thousands of them have successfully sought refuge in this country over about three months, with relatively little fanfare — and even less controversy, considering the toxicity that attends most migration issues — is a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to its values as a beacon to the world’s most desperate people. That commitment must be sustained as the war in Ukraine drags on, which seems likely.

At least 71,000 Ukrainians have entered the United States, in nearly all cases legally, through airports in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere, as well as, in the war’s earliest weeks, by crossing the southern border from Mexico. They have arrived according to various immigrant and non-immigrant categories, the most innovative of which has required U.S.-based sponsors to initiate their applications to travel here. An additional 23,000 have been approved for travel; most are likely to arrive here in the coming few months.

Under the program known as Uniting for Ukraine, sponsors have applied to support more than 60,000 Ukrainians seeking entry to this country; they include relatives or friends of those fleeing the war, as well as groups including nonprofits and churches. New online applications to sponsor individual Ukrainians are continuing at a rate of as many as 1,400 daily. In addition, roughly 22,000 managed to make it into this country before the sponsorship program was established, in April. Still others entered with visas and green cards.

This is like, a fifth of the absolute minimum number of refugees you should be taking in. Let alone the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees you should rightfully take in for how badly you fucked up that country.

South America

Ecuador

On Tuesday, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENAIE) denounced the death of an Indigenous protester as a result of police brutality in the city of Puyo, in the province of Pastaza.

“The hands of the National Police and the Guillermo Lasso administration are stained with the blood of our brother who was vilely murdered with a shot at close range,” the CONFENIAE said and released images in which Byron Guatatuca can be seen dying on the ground.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) denounced that the repression has increased since President Lasso decreed the State of Exception to try to end the national strike, which has already completed 9 consecutive days.

“It is worrying how military and police violence has escalated against those who exercise their right to protest and resist,” the Alliance of Ecuadorian Human Rights Organizations said and released videos showing violence used by the police and the army against civilians.

Global

  • BRICS developing global reserve currency RT

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – are currently working on setting up a new global reserve currency.

“The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of our countries is being worked out,” he said at the BRICS business forum.

According to the Russian president, the member states are also developing reliable alternative mechanisms for international payments.

Earlier, the group said it was working on setting up a joint payment network to cut reliance on the Western financial system. The BRICS countries have been also boosting the use of local currencies in mutual trade.

  • Another Threat to the World Economy: The End of the Housing Boom Bloomberg

From the US and UK to New Zealand and the Czech Republic, the world economy is facing yet another threat: the unraveling of a massive housing boom. Global monetary tightening is squeezing homebuyers, which could create a ripple effect that would deepen an economic slump.

After years of surging prices, property values have moved out of line with fundamentals in many OECD countries, a Bloomberg Economics analysis indicates. Taming frothy home prices is a key goal for many policy makers as they seek to quell the fastest inflation in decades. But falling home prices would erode household wealth, dent consumer confidence and potentially curb future development.

In some of the world’s bubbliest housing markets, the strain is starting to spread. Mortgage rates are rising, new home approvals are dropping and some buyers are losing money on their properties before the sales even close.

  • Raw material costs for electric vehicles have doubled during the pandemic CNBC

Raw material costs for electric vehicles more than doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report Wednesday by AlixPartners, forcing automakers from General Motors and Tesla to start-ups like Lucid and Rivian to significantly raise prices on new vehicles.

Average raw material costs for an EV totaled $8,255 per vehicle as of May, up 144% from $3,381 per vehicle in March 2020, led by materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium – all essential for the production of batteries used to power electric cars and trucks. EV-specific costs have increased to $4,500 from roughly $2,000 in the past two years, according to AlixPartners.

The cost increases aren’t limited to EVs: Raw material costs for traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines have also more than doubled during that time period to $3,662 per vehicle, up 106% from an average of $1,779 per vehicle in March 2020. That uptick is being led by increases in steel and aluminum.

  • Germany’s Scholz: G7 to discuss ‘Marshall plan’ for Ukraine Seattle Times

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that he wants to discuss the outlines of a “Marshall plan for Ukraine” with the leaders of the Group of Seven countries at their upcoming summit in Germany.

The chancellor told Germany’s parliament that “rebuilding Ukraine will be a task for generations.” Recalling his visit last week to Irpin, a Kyiv suburb that saw intense fighting, he said that “some things there remind not just me of the pictures of German cities after World War II.”

Billions of dollars will be needed to finance rebuilding over years, and that can only work if European nations, other major donor countries and international organizations work together, Scholz said. He has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the matter with the G-7 leaders by video link on Monday.

  • ‘We have a 50% likelihood of a recession globally’: Deutsche Bank chief predicts a coin toss for the world economy Fortune

Military

The Ukraine War

  • Airstrike reported at oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov Oblast Yahoo

  • A vegetable oil export terminal at a major Ukraine port is ‘on fire’ following Russian missile strike Business Insider

A vegetable oil export terminal at a major agricultural port in Ukraine was hit Wednesday during a Russian missile strike on the city of Mykolaiv, Bloomberg reports.

The terminal, owned by major agricultural trader Viterra, exports up to 1.5 million tons of vegetable oil a year.

“Viterra can confirm that its Everi terminal was hit and is currently on fire,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg, adding that nobody was killed at the facility. The Everi terminal is one of the company’s six port terminals shipping grain and oil seeds to 60 countries around the world, according to its website.

  • British weapons stockpile drained by Ukraine deliveries RT

It could take years for the UK to replace weapons that it has funneled to Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, the chief of the defense staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, has admitted. He made the remarks on Wednesday as he spoke before a parliamentary committee.

Replacing even less sophisticated weapons sent to Ukraine could take “several years” due to constraints on the UK’s industrial capacity. The “rate of expenditure” of weapons by the Ukrainian military and Britain’s capability to “backfill” them has already become “a significant issue,” Radakin said.

“We are then talking in years, because you cannot whistle up with modern weapons a quick production line,” the admiral explained.

Acceptance

  • Russia Gains in the East, Threatening to Overrun Luhansk NYT

Ukrainian forces dug in for a last-ditch defense against Russian advances Wednesday in Luhansk Province, where the invaders now threaten to overrun two major cities that had resisted their halting progress.

The prospect of a Russian takeover of the embattled cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, left Ukrainian commanders with the stark choice to stay and fight, risking severed supply lines and the encirclement of thousands of defenders, or withdraw and forfeit the last major urban centers in Luhansk, part of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

For weeks, the Russians had been content to lay back and fire artillery and rockets on the Ukrainian forces before trying to push forward with tanks and troops. This strategy culminated in an apparent breakthrough Wednesday as the Russians seized three strategic villages, the regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, conceded.

From the villages — Mirna Dolina, Podlisne and Toshkivka — the Russian troops have gained higher ground to fire on Lysychansk, including with shorter-range artillery.

“The last city is Lysychansk, and it will be very hard here, a lot of good guys will die,” said Sergiy, a Ukrainian soldier defending the city who gave only his first name for security reasons.

While the villages are small, their collapse within days of one another amounts to a significant breach in Ukraine’s defenses, bringing Russian forces to the doorstep of Lysychansk and threatening the dwindling supply routes into the city.

“The surprising aspect here is that Ukraine has chosen to reinforce as Russian forces inch closer to the city,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research group in Virginia. “Both cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, could fall in the near term.”

  • Russia Could Occupy Lysychansk in Coming Days: War Study Newsweek

Researchers at a U.S. think tank expect the Russian military to reach the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk within days, putting Moscow closer to establishing dominance over the strategically critical region.

  • From Russian Elites, No Sign of Broad Challenge to Putin NYT

Aleksandr Y. Lebedev looks like a prime target for sanctions meant to prompt Russia’s elites to turn against the Kremlin. He is a onetime billionaire and a former K.G.B. agent with deep connections both in Russia’s ruling class and in the West; his son owns British newspapers and is a member of the House of Lords.

But Mr. Lebedev has a message for anyone expecting him to now try to bring down President Vladimir V. Putin: “It’s not going to work.”

In that matter, he insists, he is powerless. “What, am I supposed to now go to the Kremlin with a banner?” Mr. Lebedev said by video call from Moscow. “It’s more likely to be the opposite.”

Leading Russian business owners and intellectuals fled their country after the invasion on Feb. 24, settling in places like Dubai, Istanbul and Berlin. But many others who were well-connected at home and had close ties to the West stayed behind, struggling to redefine their lives.

As they did, their paths diverged — illuminating the watershed of choices that the war represents for wealthy and influential Russians, and the long odds that any broad coalition of Russians will emerge to challenge Mr. Putin. A handful are speaking out against the war while remaining in the country, despite great personal risk. Many, like Mr. Lebedev, are keeping their head down. And some have chosen to throw in their lot with the Kremlin.

…

The mood of the so-called Russian elite — a kaleidoscope of senior officials, business executives, journalists and intellectuals — has been closely watched for any domestic backlash to Mr. Putin’s decision to go to war. If their dismay at the country’s sudden economic and cultural isolation were to cross a threshold, some Western officials believe, Mr. Putin might be forced to change course.

Yet what is happening in reality, interviews show, is that the mood spans a spectrum from desperation to exhilaration, but with one common denominator: the sense that the country’s future is out of their hands.

“They are drinking,” said Yevgenia M. Albats, a journalist still in Moscow, attempting to characterize those elites who were dismayed by the decision to go to war. “They are drinking very heavily.”

Almost no Russian billionaires have spoken out forcefully against the war, even though sanctions have frozen billions of dollars in their Western assets. One senior adviser to Mr. Putin has quit, reportedly over the war, but has not commented on his departure; only one Russian diplomat, a midlevel official in Geneva, has publicly resigned in protest.

  • Battle for Donbas twin cities reaches ‘fearsome climax’, says Ukraine Reuters

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow’s massive air and artillery attacks were aimed at destroying the entire Donbas region and urged Ukraine’s allies to accelerate the shipment of heavy weapons to match Russia on the battlefield.

The fight for the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in Ukraine’s Luhansk region is “entering a sort of fearsome climax”, said Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Zelenskiy. Russia is seeking to capture both Luhansk and Donetsk, which make up the Donbas region - the nation’s industrial heartland.

Climate and Space

  • Mysterious ‘Blue Blobs’ in Space Herald New Kind of Star System Newsweek

An international team of astronomers have discovered a new type of star system thanks to data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The star systems, which the experts said look like “blue blobs” when observed through the lens of a telescope and are about the size of small dwarf galaxies, are not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation.

The University of Arizona released a statement saying: “The stellar structures are thought to be created when galaxies collide with hot gas in a process that could be likened to doing a belly flop in a swimming pool.”

Dipshittery and Cope

  • Poll reveals attitudes to EU membership RT

Most EU residents say they see membership of the bloc as a “good thing,” according to the latest Eurobarometer survey published by its parliament on Wednesday. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were in support of being part of the organization, marking the highest result in 15 years.

The EU parliament noted that most countries, particularly in the Baltic region, have a significantly better attitude towards EU membership compared to a similar survey conducted late last year.

“With war returning to our continent, Europeans feel reassured to be part of the European Union. European citizens are deeply attached to freedom, are ready to defend our values, and are increasingly realizing that democracy can no longer be taken for granted,” added the parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola as 61% reported that they were not confident that their life would continue unchanged in light of the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Additionally, attitudes towards Russia and China have deteriorated according to the poll, with only 10% saying they supported Moscow, compared to 30% in 2018. The European Parliament’s report on the survey mentions that in a separate poll published last week by the European Commission, nearly 80% of respondents also expressed support for the EU’s economic sanctions against Moscow as well as Russian companies and individuals.

By contrast, the UK and the US have reportedly seen an improvement in their popularity amongst EU residents, with the UK getting a 65% approval rating, gaining one point from previous surveys, and the US getting 58%, a 13-point improvement.

You will never guess which Asian countries they polled. Actually, it’s pretty easy to guess.

Favorability ratings for Russia and President Vladimir Putin among publics in Europe and several relatively wealthy countries of East Asia have fallen to record lows, presumably as a result of the war in Ukraine, according to a new survey of international opinion conducted by the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project released Wednesday.

Conversely, positive attitudes toward NATO, which has provided strong military and other support to Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion are at or near 10-year highs in most of Europe, according to the survey, which gained the views of nearly 20,000 respondents in 17 countries, as well as the nearly 3,600 respondents the United States, between February 14 and May 11.

But while large majorities in most of the countries surveyed said they considered the United States as a “reliable partner” to their country, confidence in President Joe Biden actually fell from 2021 in almost every one, particularly in southern Europe and Singapore. Pew’s analysts suggested the slide may be related to the way the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled last August, although majorities in most of the countries surveyed said that the decision itself to withdraw was the “right one.”

Biden’s favorability ratings remained high overall, with a median of 60 percent of all respondents polled expressing confidence in him to “do the right thing in world affairs,” compared with the nine percent median who expressed such confidence in Putin. This is in stark contrast to his overall approval ratings at home, which are hovering at 39 percent according to the latest USA Today-Suffolk poll. In a NPR/Ipsos poll in May, only 36 percent had approved of the way he was handling the Russia-Ukraine situation.

The findings released Thursday covered ten European countries — Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK; five Asian nations — Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea; plus Canada and Israel.

Russia/Ukraine

  • Russians refuse to cross the Siverskyi Donets river because they are afraid - Head of Luhansk Oblast Military Administration Yahoo

“The orcs [Russian soldiers] refused to cross the Siverskyi Donets river for fear of heavy losses, because they have not recovered from the “first” Bilohorivka [the Russian army suffered huge losses when they tried to cross the Siverskyi Donets river at the end of May], so they have decided to die on other fronts.”

  • US says a Russian ‘disinformation campaign’ is blaming the West for the food crisis as Russia faces accusations of blocking Ukrainian grain exports Business Insider

The US State Department said Wednesday that Russia and its proxies are blaming the West and Ukraine for the global food crisis in a “massive disinformation campaign” that primarily targets the Middle East and Africa, areas most impacted by the crisis.

Earlier this month, Yale historian Timothy Snyder warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to starve some countries as part of his invasion efforts in Ukraine, with the intention of using mass starvation as a “backdrop for a propaganda contest.”

“When the food riots begin, and as starvation spreads, Russian propaganda will blame Ukraine, and call for Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine to be recognized, and for all sanctions to be lifted,” Snyder, a professor at Yale University and expert on authoritarianism, said.

Expert on authoritarianism, lmfao

Snyder’s assessment was not far off from what the State Department described in its Wednesday report.

  • Boris Johnson says the Russian army might soon run out of soldiers and weapons and lose its ‘forward momentum’ in Ukraine Business Insider

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this week that he believes Russia will soon lose momentum in its war with Ukraine.

Speaking to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Johnson said that he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army was suffering heavy losses of soldiers and equipment just to gain ground in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Citing intelligence reports from the British defense forces, Johnson told the outlet that he believed the Russian onslaught in Ukraine would likely lose steam in the coming few months.

“Our defense intelligence service believes, however, that in the next few months, Russia could come to a point at which there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” he said, per Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

“Then we must help the Ukrainians to reverse the dynamic. I will argue for this at the Group of Seven summit,” he said, per the outlet.

Johnson also told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that he thought it was important for the Ukrainian army to be supported in launching a counter-offensive if it is able to do so.

“This is their crisis. They are the victims of Putin’s aggression, they must decide what they want to do. But it is absolutely clear if you go to Ukraine, if you talk to the Ukrainians, and if you talk to [Ukrainian President Volodymr] Zelenskyy. you will come away with the overwhelming view that the Ukrainians will not concede their territory,” he said, per the outlet.

Johnson added that he thought a win for Ukraine would include Russian forces being repelled from the areas they invaded and for Ukraine to “regain the status quo” before the invasion on February 24, per Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

“Ukraine must win, we agree on that. The unity of the West is far more conspicuous than the divisions,” Johnson told the outlet.

Good Takes that are Dope

  • Ukraine is a Terrorist Entity like al-Qaeda and ISIS NEO

The current Kiev regime can hardly be called a “state” even with certain reservations. Just like the notorious terrorist groups banned in Russia and in many countries around the world, such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The behavior of the Kiev authorities is typically terrorist: terror against civilians, fighting under cover of civilians and the social fabric of cities, hostage-taking, intimidation, blackmail, the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing in the Ukrainian sky, the mass murder of unwanted and dissenting voices. And the international community has been silently watching this since 2014, when neo-Nazi authorities terrorized civilians in eastern Ukraine.

It should be recalled that, in response to an enquiry in 2019 by the German news agency Dpa, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Kiev already then pointed out that between 12,800 and 13,000 people died in the conflict in Donbass from April 2014 to December 2018 alone.

However, other calculations have been made in the West, and the results differ considerably from the above. In 2015, for example, German intelligence estimated a total of 50,000 deaths in eastern Ukraine. Even then, there was confidence in Germany that the official figures were “too low and not credible”.

According to annual reports by the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), most civilian casualties occurred in the first two years of the conflict, 2014 (2,546 people were killed then) and 2015 (1,395 people were killed). Similar numbers of civilians killed by the terrorist actions of the Kiev authorities also came from the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).

At the same time, the figures cited for civilian deaths resulting from the aggressive actions of the current authorities in Kiev since 2014 are hardly an objective reflection of the situation. They do not take into account the number of victims of post-traumatic syndrome and stress, how many elderly and civilians have died in eastern Ukraine during this period due to the inability to reach them by ambulance under shelling, or from heart attacks during artillery attacks on civilian towns by Kiev militants. The only thing that has already been established is that old people die more often during shelling because they don’t have time to run to shelter.

The current government in Kiev emerged through a terrorist takeover of government buildings by a group of terrorists, violating the will of the vast majority of its population (literally months before the separatist act of voting in a referendum to preserve the USSR). Since 2014, when Russia’s special operation to denazify Ukraine has not yet begun, Kiev’s militants have regularly shelled not the military barracks of the Donbass militia, but peaceful towns, hospitals, schools, kindergartens and social infrastructure, just as ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists (both banned in Russia) did recently in the Middle East. Are these not terrorist acts by the Kiev regime?

In a report published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the period February 1 to July 31, 2021, the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, acknowledged that Ukrainian military formations bear the lion’s share of the blame for the destruction and deaths. She noted that 77% of the victims of shelling were those of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as 80% of all shells fired during the conflict exploded on the territory of the Donbass People’s Republics. This conclusion by M. Bogner is important because no one can call the UN report “Russian propaganda” and the international community treats its data as objective information which records the guilt of the Ukrainian side.

Moreover, the Ukrainian Nazis do not even hide, but boast of committing terrorist acts, publishing in the Ukrainian media and social networks the results of their terrorist actions in various cities in eastern Ukraine, testifying themselves to their criminal activities.

Recently, the terrorist activity of the Kiev regime, even in the context of the “shell hunger”, has been transferred to Russian territory, to peaceful Russian towns located in the Bryansk and Kursk regions bordering on Ukraine, again resulting in the death of civilians, not the military! One particularly striking confirmation of such terrorist activity by Kiev was the recent strike on Chernomorneftegaz platforms at the Odesskoye field, several dozen kilometers from Odessa, where, as is known, there are no military units and the site itself is purely civilian.

Bloomerism and Hope

  • Colombia’s New President: What This Victory Means For The Continent Popular Resistance

On August 7th a new left of center government will take power in Colombia. Many questions remain to be answered but one thing is clear: this historic election marks a break with a long Colombian history of State violence and monolithic conservatism.

On June 19, Gustavo Petro beat his rival, the businessman Rodolfo Hernández, by a margin of 50.44% to 47.03%, after 100% of the country’s polling stations reported their results. Both his opponent and current president Iván Duque recognized the results, congratulating Petro.

Despite an information war and decades of violence against the left, over 11 million Colombians successfully mobilized and voted for the historic change. La Unión Patriótica (UP) was one leftist political party that suffered from this political genocide. Over 5,000 UP leaders were assassinated, including Bernardo Jaramillo, the UP presidential candidate in 1990, along with 21 lawmakers, 70 local councilors and 11 mayors. It is this reality of state and paramilitary violence that has long earned Colombia the infamous designation as the most dangerous place on earth for union leaders and journalists. Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) have documented the hundreds of assassinations and dozens of massacres that occur in Colombia every year.

Petro is the seventh former leftist guerilla fighter to become president in a Latin American nation, joining Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua, Dilma Rousseff from Brazil, José Mujica from Uruguay, Salvador Sánchez Cerén from El Salvador, and Fidel and Raúl Castro, from Cuba. However, unlike the others from the list, Petro doesn’t belong to the Bolivarian momentum sweeping across the continent. This outcome of former guerrilla leaders, including Petro, serving their countries as presidents, as well as the recent elections of progressive presidents in Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Argentina, shows clearly the weakness of the neoliberal model that is, so far, incapable of solving the poverty, corruption, hierarchies of domination, and chronic inequality that affects most of the Latin American continent. By electing Petro, the Colombian people are sending a strong message of frustration with a failed model that has brought organized crime, social disparities, chronic violence, a 40% poverty rate and militarization of the public sphere to the lives of millions of citizens.

Extra

  • Mexico scientist gets 4 years for spying for Russia in Miami Seattle Times

A prominent Mexican scientist who led a double life with two families on separate continents and was co-opted by Russian agents into surveilling a U.S. government informant residing in Miami has been sentenced to four years and one day in federal prison.

Hector Cabrera Fuentes, 36, was sentenced Tuesday in Miami federal court, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty in February to acting in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general.

Cabrera was arrested in 2020 at Miami International Airport as he and his Mexican wife — the other is from Russia — were looking to return to their home in Mexico City. A day earlier, Valentine’s Day, the couple attracted the attention of a security guard as they were caught on surveillance tape tailgating another vehicle onto the premises of a Miami-area condominium and snapping a photo of the U.S. source’s car and license plate — ignoring instructions not to take any pictures but just jot down the vehicle’s location.

The bizarre tale of Cabrera’s botched intelligence mission began in 2019 when his Russian wife and her two daughters traveled from Germany to Russia to take care of a bureaucratic matter. When the woman tried to return to Germany she was not allowed to depart, an FBI agent said in an affidavit accompanying the original indictment.

Cabrera then traveled to Russia to see his family and was allegedly contacted by a Russian official he had met years earlier in a professional capacity. The individual, who is not identified in court filings, advised Cabrera that his family shouldn’t travel to Europe or seek a U.S. visa.

It was around this time that Cabrera began to believe the individual worked for Russia’s FSB intelligence agency, according to the FBI.

…

Prior to his arrest, Cabrera worked in Singapore as an associate professor at a medical school jointly run by Duke University and the National University of Singapore.

He also was appointed director in 2018 of the FEMSA Biotechnology Center at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in northern Mexico, which said he earned doctorates in molecular microbiology in Russia and molecular cardiology in Germany.

In his hometown of El Espinal, in the southern state of Oaxaca, Cabrera is something of a local hero, remembered for his work to promote scientific research, heal those suffering from diabetes and assist in the rebuilding of homes after devastating earthquakes.

Link back to the discussion thread.