Poland’s new PM, Donald Tusk, has taken the public broadcaster off the air, and the heads of the TVP state broadcaster and Polish Radio were replaced to “depoliticize” them and have them provide “reliable information”. The fascist PiS party has said that this indicates Poland is heading towards dictatorship, while the PiS-controlled media regulator has said this is “an act of lawlessness and recalls the worst times of martial law,” a reference to 1981. Polish nationalists have been trying to occupy state TV offices to protest.

South Korean carmaker Hyundai has announced that it is selling its factory in Russia for $77. Not $77 million or thousand, just 77 bucks. This means they will have a loss of $220 million. It wants to transfer its St. Petersburg assets by the end of the month. Non-western brands will likely fill the void; Russia is already China’s largest car export market.

Ethiopia and Egypt have once again failed to reach an agreement over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will ultimately produce 6000 MW, enough to turn Ethiopia into a net exporter of electricity. Egypt obviously does not want the downstream water to be curtailed, while Ethiopia wants to generate electricity, but despite repeated attempts to find a compromise between them, none have been reached so far. Ethiopia is not pausing its operations despite a lack of agreement, continuing to fill up the reservoir and get the dam fully online.

In the midst of an economic crisis caused by gestures vaguely, Ghana, the world’s second largest cocoa producer, is having production increasingly disrupted by illegal mining and smuggling. To survive, farmers are having to sell their land to illegal miners, which is more profitable than growing cocoa. Ghana has gone from ~1 million tonnes of cocoa in 2020 to 750,000 tonnes for 2022-2023, and ~700 tonnes for 2023-2024. Ghana’s government tries to increase the profitability of cocoa production by first buying the cocoa and then selling it on to private corporations and thus can boost prices for producers (and agreed to a 63% increase this year) but this is insufficient.

A town in Michigan has successfully fought the insidious communist influence of China by protesting against an American subsidiary of a Chinese company that wanted to build an electric vehicle battery cell factory in their town which would have provided 2500 jobs. Xi Jinping is reportedly day-drinking after his mission to destroy American democracy by establishing a surveillance network in Michigan via tracking microchips maliciously inserted in the batteries. Long live the gasoline car!

Russian Defense Minister Shoigu has estimated that Ukraine has lost over 383,000 troops, killed and wounded, since the beginning of the war, as well as 14,000 tanks, IFVs and APCs, 553 warplanes, 259 helicopters, 8500 artillery pieces, and MLRSes.