Ukraine Presents White House With List Of Targets Deep Inside Russia

 Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has revealed to CNN that the Zelensky government has presented a list of significant targets which lie deep inside Russia to the Biden White House for approval to strike.

His words in the new CNN interview come as Kiev is engaged in intensive lobbying with Washington to get President Biden to greenlight the use of US missiles for longer range attacks. Ukraine has also been begging to receive long-rage missiles toward that end.

"We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard," Umerov told CNN’s Alex Marquardt on "The Situation Room."

That's when Umerov specified that the White House has been provided a list of desirable targets "deep" in Russian territory:

But Umerov pushed back on such assessments, saying Ukraine has presented the US a list of targets they would use ATACMS to strike.

"We are showing that the airfields that they are using to hit our cities are within the range of deep strikes," Umerov said on CNN.

CNN says that the Biden administration is actively mulling the lifting of all restrictions. This comes dangerously as Ukraine's Kursk offensive is approaching the one month mark (highly dangerous for the prospect of triggering WW3).

Kiev officials have described that part of the purpose of invading and holding Russian territory is to show NATO backers that Putin's red lines are bluff. 

Zelensky is hoping that as a result the West can be convinced that there's nothing to worry about in terms of escalation with nuclear-armed Russia.

Ukraine especially wants all current restrictions on ATACMS systems' range and use to be lifted. It argues this is crucial for protecting Ukrainian civilians.

At this point in the war, Ukraine has been sending weekly and near daily drone strikes against Russia, targeting especially oil depots and energy facilities. Several more have been reported struck and damaged on Sunday, including sites in the Moscow region.

"They’re killing our citizens. That’s why we want to deter them, we want to stop them, we don’t want [to] allow their aviation to come closer to our borders to bomb the cities," Umerov further told CNN.

Ukraine's military has said it is still advancing in Kursk; however, in Donbass where the real front lines are is a very different story. There the Russians are regularly advancing, and have Kiev forces outmanned and outgunned.

But with these expanded cross-border strikes into Russia growing more bolder, and given the White House may openly come out and start supporting this, many analysts are waiting for President Putin to exact revenge in a major way which sends a strong 'message' that he is in fact willing to act on his red lines. It's perhaps only a matter of time for such a massive new escalation from Moscow. This could include directly targeting the Ukrainian capital in a 'shock and awe' way, or possibly even a hit on Ukrainian parliament or government buildings.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-presents-white-house-list-targets-deep-inside-russia

Harris aims to hide her long record of backing Medicare for All

 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is running away from her previous support for Medicare for All. 

That’s understandable: New public-opinion research indicates it’s not what voters want.

Just 37% of likely voters support a government takeover of the country’s health-insurance system and a concomitant ban on private health insurance, according to a survey conducted by Echelon Insights and sponsored by the Pacific Research Institute.

And support for such a single-payer system has been eroding, dropping three percentage points from 2023.

By contrast, 91% of insured voters are satisfied with their current plan.

That figure has grown three years in a row. 

Those nine in 10 people with insurance ought to pay careful attention not just to what Harris & Co. are saying about health care now, but what they’ve said in the past.

They won’t like what they hear.

In 2019, during her ill-fated first run for the presidency, Kamala Harris released her own single-payer health-care plan.

As a US senator, she co-sponsored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ quixotic bids for Medicare for All in 2017 and 2019.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Harris said in 2017.

Two years later, when asked if she supported a ban on private insurance, Harris replied, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

Harris’ supporters claim she’s changed her mind, and a pliant press corps has taken them at their word.

But as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) recently asked, “How do you know that is not her position now?”

“She has not said that,” Cotton told host Jonathan Karl of ABC’s “This Week.” “She’s taking these efforts not to change these positions, but to hide these positions.”

Polling data suggests that’s smart politics.

Majorities across the political spectrum — three-quarters of Republicans, nearly six in 10 Democrats, and two-thirds of voters overall — believe that health care should empower doctors and patients to make the system more competitive, not give added power to the federal government, according to Echelon’s research.

Perhaps those numbers shouldn’t be surprising, given what government-run health care has delivered in other parts of the world.

Across our northern border, Canadians face a median wait time of more than 27 weeks — over six months — for treatment from a specialist following referral by a general practitioner, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank.

That’s almost triple the median wait in 1993, when Fraser started tracking wait times.

In 2022, the Angus Reid Institute found that nearly 13 million Canadian adults, or 41%, reported either a challenge or an outright inability to access emergency care, non-emergency care, diagnostic examination, surgery or a specialist appointment. 

The average family of four in Canada pays nearly $18,000 a year in taxes for government-sponsored health coverage, Fraser estimated this month — but all those taxes appear to buy little more than long waits and substandard care. 

In short, Canada’s system of “universal” health care does not function universally. 

Meanwhile, a health-care crisis unfolded in Great Britain this year as chronic staffing shortages were exacerbated by strikes.

More than 7.6 million people were waiting for hospital treatment from the government-run National Health Service as of May.

In 1983, the British Social Attitudes survey first measured residents’ feelings about British life, including their medical experience.

Last year, a record low 24% of those polled claimed satisfaction with the NHS.

Wait times, staffing shortages and inadequate government spending were cited as the main concerns.

This is what a broken health-care system looks like.

Kamala Harris and many of her fellow Democrats have a long track record of supporting a government takeover of the US health-insurance system. 

The many, many Americans who are satisfied with their own health-care arrangements — and who don’t want to see Canadian or European health care imported stateside — should remember that record when they head to the polls this fall.

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is “False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All” (Encounter 2020).

https://nypost.com/2024/09/02/opinion/kamala-harris-aims-to-hide-record-of-backing-medicare-for-all/

NASA astronaut stuck in space reports ‘strange noises’ coming from troubled Boeing capsule

 A NASA astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday reported hearing a “strange noise” coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft just days before it is set to leave the station and return to Earth on autopilot.

The astronaut, Butch Wilmore, radioed Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston to inquire about the noise. 

On an audio recording of the exchange, Wilmore holds up a phone to the speakers so that Mission Control could hear the noise he was referring to.

A pulsating sound emanating at steady intervals can be heard through Wilmore’s device.

“Butch, that one came through,” Mission Control says after not hearing it the first time. “It was kind of like a pulsating noise, almost like a sonar ping.” 

“I’ll do it one more time and let you all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore tells Mission Control, playing the sound one more time. 

Mission Control tells Wilmore the recording will be passed along and that they’ll let him know what they find.

Wilmore clarifies that the sound is emanating from the speaker inside the Starliner. 

Butch Wilmore reported hearing a “strange noise” coming from Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — docked here to the Harmony module of the International Space Station on July 3, 2024.AP

The bizarre sound was first reported by Ars Technica, which cited a recording first captured and shared by Michigan-based meteorologist Rob Dale. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to Mission Control and Boeing to inquire if the source of the sound has been identified.

Starliner is slated to undock from the ISS, empty, and attempt to return on autopilot with a touchdown in the New Mexico desert. 

Astronauts Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams will not being coming back to Earth until February.AP

NASA decided it was too risky to bring back Wilmore and Suni Williams until February.

The astronauts were originally slated for a weeklong trip in early June, but the mission has been mired in problems after thruster failures and helium leaks.

Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled spacecraft program after years of delays and ballooning costs.

The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests in both space and on the ground.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/02/us-news/nasa-astronaut-stuck-in-space-reports-strange-noises-coming-from-troubled-starliner-capsule/

China urges EU to be 'objective and fair' on South China Sea issue

 China urged the European Union to be "objective and fair" and careful with words and actions on issues in the South China Sea, after the bloc remarked on an incident that occurred over the weekend.

China said it was "strongly dissatisfied" with the European Union's "accusations" against it on the issue, a statement by the Chinese mission to the EU showed.

"The European Union is not a party to the South China Sea issue and has no right to point fingers on the issue," it said.

It also said the EU's repeated "hyping up" on the freedom of navigation issue "has no benefits to the EU's own interests and international credibility".

China and the Philippines exchanged accusations of intentionally ramming coast guard vessels in disputed waters of the South China Sea on Saturday, the latest in an escalating series of clashes.

The collision near the Sabina Shoal was their fifth maritime confrontation in a month in a longstanding rivalry over the vital waterway.

The EU said in a Sunday statement that it condemned the "dangerous actions by China Coast Guard vessels against lawful Philippine maritime operations" in the sea.

In the statement, the European Union External Action Service said the recent incidents between Chinese and Philippines authorities "endanger the safety of life at sea, and violate the right to freedom of navigation and overflight to which all nations are entitled under international law."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-urges-eu-objective-fair-011314980.html

Brazil top court justices to vote on Monday on X ban

 A five-member panel of Brazil's Supreme Court will vote on Monday whether to uphold Justice Alexandre de Moraes' ruling to shut down social media platform X in the country.

Moraes, whom X owner Elon Musk has labeled a "dictator," has called a virtual session of the court's first chamber - of which he is a member - so peers can review his decision.

Brazil's Supreme Court has 11 justices split between two chambers of five members each, not including the chief justice. They can vote to maintain or reject decisions by a single judge.

Justices Carmen Lucia, Luiz Fux, Cristiano Zanin and Flavio Dino sit on the first chamber alongside Moraes.

X was taken down in Brazil, one of its largest markets, in the early hours of Saturday following a decision by Moraes, who has been locked in a months-long feud with Musk.

The popular social media platform missed a court-imposed deadline on Thursday evening to name a legal representative in Brazil as required by local law, triggering the suspension.

The dispute over X has its roots in a Moraes order earlier this year that required the platform to block accounts implicated in probes of alleged misinformation and hate.

Musk has argued that Moraes was trying to enforce unjustified censorship and closed the X office in Brazil in August, without appointing a new representative. The judge has insisted that social media needs hate speech regulations.

Moraes' latest decision was backed by Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso.

"A company that refuses to name a legal representative in Brazil cannot operate in Brazilian territory," Barroso said in an interview with newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published on Sunday.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/brazil-top-court-justices-vote-192208073.html

Bill Ackman Says X Ban Will Make Brazil an ‘Uninvestable Market’

 Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman joined critics of a court order to suspend Elon Musk’s X in Brazil, saying the ruling will likely drive away investors and harm the country.

On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered internet service providers in Brazil to block its users from accessing X, after the social media company refused to appoint a legal representative in the country to deal with requests to take down accounts allegedly involved in spreading political misinformation.

Moraes also ordered the freeze of funds held by another of Musk’s enteprises, Starlink, to serve as collateral for fines imposed on X for not following court decisions.

The “illegal shut down of X and account freeze at Starlink put Brazil on a rapid path to becoming an uninvestable market,” Ackman said in a post on X on Saturday night. “China committed similar acts leading to capital flight and a collapse in valuations. The same will happen to Brazil unless they quickly retreat from these illegal acts.”

Over the weekend, most of Brazil’s largest internet providers complied with the order, pushing users in the country to migrate to some of X’s competitors. Social media network Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey after selling Twitter to Musk, reported one million new users in the three days ending on Saturday and published a series of posts in Portuguese to welcome Brazilians signing up for the service.

The full panel of panel of Supreme Court justices will seek to reconvene as soon as Monday to discuss the ban and are likely to back Moraes’s ruling, local website G1 reported, citing an unnamed judge. In an interview with newspaper Folha, Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso appeared to support the ruling, saying without mentioning X in particular that a company without legal representation in the country can’t be allowed to operate.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-ackman-says-x-ban-142336827.html

NYT investigation finds Acadia breaks law by holding patients

 Acadia Healthcare has lured patients into its psychiatric hospitals and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas of New York Times report, citing the paper’s own investigation. In at least 12 of the 19 states where Acadia operates psychiatric hospitals, dozens of patients, employees and police officers have alerted the authorities that the company was detaining people in ways that violated the law, according to records reviewed by The Times. Some patients arrived at emergency rooms seeking routine mental health care, only to find themselves sent to Acadia facilities and locked in, the Times says. Acadia employees told the paper that the company uses a host of strategies to persuade insurers to cover longer stays, including exaggerating patients’ symptoms, tweaking medication dosages, then claiming patients needed to stay longer because of the adjustment, and arguing that patients are not well enough to leave because they did not finish a meal.

https://www.tipranks.com/news/the-fly/new-york-times-investigation-finds-acadia-breaks-law-by-holding-patients