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UK threat level against MPs at ‘substantial’

By
IFP Media Wire
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The threat level against MPs has been raised to “substantial”, the home secretary has told the Commons, with police saying they would now work with MPs to review the security they receive.

Patel, making a statement on MPs’ security after the killing of Sir David on Friday, urged them to take the “change in risk seriously” following a review by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre.

“While we do not see any information or intelligence which points to any credible or specific or imminent threat, I must update the House that the threat level facing members of parliament is now deemed to be substantial,” Patel told the Commons.

“This is the same level as the current national threat to the United Kingdom as a whole, so I can assure the house that our world-class intelligence and security agencies and counter-terror police will now ensure that this change is properly reflected in the operational posture,” she continued.

This new level corresponds with the national risk guidance on terrorist attacks, meaning that an attack is “likely”. Patel did not state which level the risk to MPs stood at before – the other levels are low and moderate.

A spokesperson for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “In light of this announcement, we will be working closely with government, forces and parliamentary authorities to review the security offering for MPs, ensuring a more consistent security response wherever MPs are in the country.

“Any recommendations made to members will need to be bespoke to their individual circumstances,” the spokesperson noted.

Officers had already been in touch with every MP since the killing of Amess in his Southend-on-Sea constituency, the statement added.

Amess’s death came just over five years after Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a rightwing terrorist. Ali Harbi Ali, 25, was arrested at the scene in Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody. He has been detained under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and detectives are expected to continue to question him until Friday after a warrant of further detention was granted.

US-Mexico border detentions at highest level in decades

By
IFP Media Wire
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Between October 2020 and September 2021, US border authorities detained more than 1.7 million migrants at the country’s southern border, the highest number since 1986, according to new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, obtained by The Washington Post daily.

The CBP is due to release the data later this week, according to the newspaper.

The WaPo report comes after Tucson Police Department Chief Chris Magnus, nominated by President Joe Biden to head the CBP, faced tough questioning from Senate Republicans, who in particular pressed him to call the surge in migrant arrivals a “crisis”.

Magnus, however, described it as a “significant challenge”, adding that “the numbers are very high”, something that echoed the Biden administration’s preferred remarks to depict the situation with migrants.

Washington has repeatedly drawn criticism from Republicans over the president’s handling of the refugee crisis at the US southern border, with the White House repeatedly calling the issue a “vital human challenge” instead of a “migration crisis”.

The New York Post has, meanwhile, reported that the Biden administration is secretly flying planes with unaccompanied migrant minors to suburban New York in order to quietly resettle them across the region.

The paper also referred to its analysis of online flight-tracking data, which suggested that around 2,000 unaccompanied migrant minors have arrived at the Westchester County Airport, 30 miles north of New York City, on 21 flights since 8 August.

The latest CBP figures showed that at least 37,805 unaccompanied migrant children have already entered the US.

Shortly after assuming office in January, Biden began to reverse former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, halting construction of a border wall, moving to end “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement”, and promising to “restore and expand” the asylum system.

Other moves included rescinding the Trump-era travel ban and promising a “path to citizenship” for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the US.

Majority of Americans blame Biden for rising inflation

By
IFP Media Wire
-

Sixty-two percent of Americans said Biden is somewhat or very responsible for increasing inflation — the same number who believe the country is on the wrong track, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

Forty percent said Biden’s policies are very responsible and 22 percent said they are somewhat responsible for inflation, which has hit its highest rate in 13 years, a Morning Consult/Politico poll found.

Another 18 percent believe the administration’s policies are not too responsible, and 10 percent said they aren’t responsible at all.

Asked if the country is on the right track, 38 percent agreed, while 62 percent believe it’s on the wrong track.

American consumers are suffering sticker shock as the nation faces a supply chain crisis and rising fuel prices.

According to the Consumer Price Index, the cost of food has increased 4.6 percent since last year, with the prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs topping the list of food items at 10.5 percent.

In August, the inflation rate was up 5.3 percent compared to a year ago, meaning a household with the median annual income of about $70,000, pays an extra $175 a month on food, fuel and housing.

The poll also asked respondents what they view as the top issue when it comes time to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

Economic issues like wages, jobs, taxes and spending finished on top with 38 percent.

Coming in second at 18 percent are security issues involving terrorism and border security.

Energy issues — carbon emissions, cost of electricity/gasoline and renewables — polled at 5 percent.

Asked which party’s candidate they would vote for if a congressional election were held today, 45 percent said Democratic, 40 percent said Republican and 15 percent said they didn’t know.

The poll surveyed 1,998 registered voters between Oct. 16 and 18. It has a plus/minus 2 percentage-point margin of error.

“Grossi Impeding Talks on Iran Nuclear Deal”

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-

“The IEAE director general, who has travelled to the United States to meet the country’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, once again took a stance against our country and warned against what he called ‘restrictions’ on the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities,” said nournews.

“In the interview, Grossi said he should immediately meet Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian to talk to him about the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran’s atomic activities,” the article by nournews read.

Nournews noted although an agreement has been reached on Grossi visiting Iran again, no date has been announced by Tehran for the trip yet due to his ongoing politically-tainted behaviour and his failure to abide by bilateral agreements.

“Grossi reportedly insists that he meetس Iranian officials, especially President Ebrahim Raeisi, before a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors slated for November,” the opinion piece further read.

Nournews said Grossi is incontrovertibly one of the serious obstacles to the resumption of nuclear talks between Iran and the 4+1 group.

“One can say with certainty that since he took over as IAEA Director General, Grossi’s comments and moves have been very similar to the Israeli regime obstructionist actions in Iran’s nuclear program,” the article added.

By levelling unsubstantiated accusations and by referring to fabricated reports and documents presented by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Nournews, Grossi reopened dossiers closed after the signing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Hence he has promoted an atmosphere of distrust and turned into a stumbling block to the talks.

Farhadi’s ‘A Hero’ Picked to Represent Iranian Cinema in 2022 Oscars

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-

“Seeing the change in the regulations for the Academy Award for the best international feature film and the change in the deadline for submission of movies to the past editions of the Oscars, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the jury began its work by examination of 44 previously-screened Iranian movies and then the members … that down to a three-title list,” said Raed Faridzadeh, the jury’s secretary and spokesman.

Faridzadeh said the three movies were Dasht-e-Khamoush (The Wasteland), Bandar Band and Ghahreman (A Hero).

According to him, among them and after a review of the regulations and the technical features of the films, the jury picked Asghar Farhadi’s movie as their pick and it will be submitted to the 2022 Academy Awards as Iran’s representative.

Ghahreman, won Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix in its firm foreign screening.

The movie tells the story of Rahim who has divorced his wife and is imprisoned for his debt to his former brother-in-law.

Farhadi won his first Oscar in 2011 for the film A Seperation and then in 2016 for his film The Salesman. He is among few directors worldwide to have won the title twice.

Report: US raises Saudi-Israel normalization with MbS

By
Fatemeh Askarieh
-
Mohammad bin Salman

The Saudi crown prince did not reject Sullivan’s normalization proposal outright during their meeting on September 27 in the Red Sea City of Neom. Instead, MbS reportedly said it would take some time and presented Sullivan with a list of measures that have to be met first — including warming of ties with the US.

The steps included an improvement in bilateral US-Saudi relations, which have become strained since the election of US President Joe Biden, who set expectations for Saudi Arabia to improve its record on human rights — a key issue in US-Saudi relations.

Any Saudi agreement to normalize relations with Israel would require significant steps by Israel on the Palestinian issue, the report added.

Riyadh has long stated that it would not normalize with Israel until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is solved and a Palestinian state is established based on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Back in 2018, in an interview with the US-based The Atlantic magazine, the 32-year-old heir declared that Israel had the right to its own land alongside the Palestinians.

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation,” the crown prince stated, adding that “there are a lot of interests” his country shares with Israel.

The Biden administration had pledged to “relicalibrate” the relationship with Saudi Arabia in its meeting with Saudi officials in February, after the US released a declassified intelligence report implicating bin Salman in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Biden officials also vowed to expand the Abraham Accords at their one-year anniversary, a carryover of the administration of Donald Trump, to actively work to support and expand the growing diplomatic ties between Israel and the Arab nations.

The Abraham Accords created a shift in Arab-Israeli relations — as Arab states including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Sudan — agreed to formally and publicly establish diplomatic relations with Israel amid an upsurge in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Saudis were said to have supported the UAE’s decision to sign a peace treaty with Israel — and helped facilitate the agreement by opening its airspace to Israeli aircraft for direct flights from Dubai to Abu Dhabi.

After returning from Neom, Sullivan held a public meeting Thursday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Washington to discuss “US-Saudi strategic cooperation on regional issues along with broader issues.” Neither country, however, mentioned normalization with Israel in their public statements about the meeting.

US Secretary of State Antony John Blinken met with Sullivan recently to discuss expanding the Abraham Accords in their meetings with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. A senior Israeli official allegedly informed reporters after Lapid’s visit that at least one country would “definitely” be joining the other Arab countries in signing the accords.

According to the report, senior White House officials told a conference call of Jewish leaders last Friday that the US was “quietly” engaging several Arab and Muslim countries on the issue of normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel.

Several Trump administration officials allegedly boasted in private that they would have sealed an agreement with Saudi Arabia within a year if Trump had been reelected.

US calls for ‘sustained and substantive’ talks with North Korea

By
IFP Media Wire
-

The United States has offered to meet North Korea without preconditions and made clear that Washington has no hostile intent toward Pyongyang, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said on Wednesday as the Security Council met over North Korea’s latest missile launch.

North Korea – formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – has long accused the United States of having a hostile policy toward the Asian state and asserted that it has the right to develop weapons for self-defense.

“The DPRK must abide by the Security Council resolutions and it is time to engage in sustained and substantive dialogue toward the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters.

North Korea has been subjected to U.N. sanctions since 2006, which have been steadily strengthened in a bid to cut off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The measures include a ban on ballistic missile launches.

“We have offered to meet the DPRK officials, without any preconditions, and we have made clear that we hold no hostile intent toward the DPRK,” Thomas-Greenfield added.

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump met three times in 2018 and 2019, but failed to make progress on U.S. calls for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and North Korea’s demands for an end to sanctions.

Thomas-Greenfield said President Joe Biden’s administration was “prepared to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy.”

European council members – France, Estonia and Ireland – also urged North Korea to “engage meaningfully” with repeated offers of dialogue by the United States and South Korea.

North Korea on Tuesday test-fired a new, smaller ballistic missile from a submarine, prompting the United States and Britain to raise the issue in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.
“It is the latest in a series of reckless provocations,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters.

“These are unlawful activities. They are in violation of multiple Security Council resolutions. And they are unacceptable,” Thomas-Greenfield continued.

Poll: Almost 80% of republicans want Trump to run for president

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Trump

Nearly 80 percent of Republicans want to see Trump wage a third White House bid in 2024, according to a new Quinnipiac University survey.

Seventy-eight percent of Republicans polled said they think Trump should run again, while 16 percent said he should sit out the 2024 race. Meanwhile, 94 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents said Trump should not run.

The poll underscores the stubborn support Trump enjoys among the GOP base, backing that may be growing. Sixty-six percent of Republicans said in the same poll in May that Trump should run for the White House in three years.

“While a majority of Americans say, ‘been there, done that’ about Trump, and half feel he has damaged the underpinnings of democracy, support for the former president within the GOP has grown,” stated Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy.

The survey comes as Trump presents increasingly strong signals that he plans to launch a 2024 campaign.

The former president has begun traveling at a more frequent clip, including to swing states such as Iowa, and has doled out a slew of endorsements, including in key House and Senate races. He also continues to fundraise, raking in millions from his extensive small-dollar donor network.

Republicans have debated the role of the former president in the GOP following the Jan. 6 insurrection, which was in support of his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him. However, he appears to have bounced back, with more GOP figures, including in Washington, coalescing around him.

Still, his role in inciting the insurrection could impact him in a general election campaign, with 51 percent of Americans saying he has been undermining democracy since the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s sway is looming large over would-be GOP presidential contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, who are expected to wait for an official announcement one way or another on the former president’s 2024 aspirations before declaring their own intentions.

The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,342 adults and 1,168 registered voters from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18, with margins of error of 2.7 and 2.9 percentage points, respectively.

Trump on Wednesday announced the upcoming launch of his own social media network called “TRUTH Social.”

“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable,” Trump said in a release.

“I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon. TMTG was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. I’m excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech. Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!” he added.

Trump was largely banned from major social media networks, including Facebook and his favored Twitter, at the beginning of the year after the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot. After leaving office, he operated a blog similar in style to Twitter before shutting it down about a month after it was started.

Earlier in October, Trump asked a federal judge to force Twitter into reinstating his account.

“Coerced by members of the United States Congress, operating under an unconstitutional immunity granted by a permissive federal statute, and acting directly with federal officials, Defendant is censoring Plaintiff, a former President of the United States,” the motion read.

A beta launch of the site for “invited guests” is expected in November, with a full launch in the first quarter of 2022.

The site’s upcoming launch was coupled with the announcement that Trump Media & Technology Group has entered into a definitive merger agreement with Digital World Acquisition Corp. that will allow it to become a publicly listed company.

According to MarketWatch, Digital World Acquisition Corp. is a blank-check company that was founded on Dec. 11, 2020. As a blank-check company, it has no specific business plan and was started for the purposes of acquiring or merging with other companies.

The Trump Media & Technology Group also announced plans to launch a subscription-based video service called TMTG+ that will feature “non-woke” programming. The new endeavor will be led by reality television producer Scott St. John, who has worked on shows such as “Deal or No Deal” and “America’s Got Talent.”

Syria base housing US forces hit by drone attacks

By
IFP Media Wire
-

Unidentified drones reportedly carry out a set of attacks against a controversial military base belonging to the US-led coalition occupying Syria.

The attacks were reported across various media outlets in late Wednesday.

The reports specified the target as the outpost located in the hugely-strategic al-Tanf area in southeastern Syria.

The United States has been trying to exercise control over the area, which hosts an intersection of the Syrian, Iraqi, and Jordanian borders.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported “the sound of explosion” had rung out of the base during the incident.
Sky News Arabia cited “an American official” as describing the incident as a likely “rocket attack.”
“Preliminary evaluations,” the official claimed, had shown that “Iraqi groups” had conducted the airstrikes.
Reuters also carried a report pointing to an incident involving the base that had not caused any casualties.

The garrison was used as a place to train Syrian opposition forces to patrol for militants, according to The Associated Press.

The United States led scores of its allies in an invasion of Syria in 2014.

The coalition that has allegedly been seeking to fight the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh sustains its illegal presence in the Arab country, although Damascus and its allies defeated the terror outfit in late 2017.

Iranian truck drivers released after months of detention in Azerbaijan

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-

Shahroud Norouzi and Jaafar Barzegar were released Thursday after unrelenting pursuit of their case by Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the Iranian embassy in Baku.

The two had been detained while carrying goods to Azerbaijan’s newly liberated areas during last year’s war with Armenia.

Iran’s Roads and Transportation Organization has issued guidelines to transportation companies to strictly observe the laws and sensitivities of other countries in light of new changes in borders of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan following their 44-day war.

The detention of the two truck drivers and some other issues like the presence of the Zionist regime in Azerbaijan’s territory near the Iranian border caused tensions in ties between Tehran and Baku.

Iran recently held a military drill near the border.

The Azerbaijani president criticized the maneuver. However, tensions have abated now after several meetings between the Iranian and Azerbaijani officials.

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