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A Pakistani official says there are no warnings or restrictions for mountaineering expeditions in the north

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Exclusive: Prime minister Feletei Teo says Tuvalu may withdraw from crucial meeting after key countries such as Taiwan were barred from attendingTuvalu’s prime minister Feletei Teo said his country may pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners – including China, US and Taiwan – from attending.The Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting will be held in Honiara in September. On 7 August, Solomon Islands prime minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Continue reading...

This is what happens when cynical, greedy, amoral billionaires and psychopaths run a country.The Times of London (Murdoch-owned) is reporting that billionaire Steve Witkoff, billionaire Donald Trump, and billionaire Vladimir Putin have worked out a model behind the scenes to solve the Ukraine problem: just make it like Gaza.They’re planning, according to this reporting, to fully respect the borders of Ukraine and the country’s sovereignty, but with one catch. Just like Israel did with Gaza, Ukraine can “self-govern” but all political and economic decisions will be made or approved by Moscow, all funds flowing through Moscow, just like the governments of Gaza and the West Bank are subservient to the whims of Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset.It's essentially a plan to return Ukraine to the subordinate status it had when it was part of the old Soviet Union, which Putin appears committed to reestablishing, country by country.Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, former Sinclair Broadcasting commentator Sebastian Gorka, went all “peace for our time” Neville Chamberlain with his apparent endorsement of the idea:“We recognize the reality on the ground and we have one priority above all else, whether it’s the Middle East or whether it’s Ukraine. It’s to stop the bloodshed. Everything else comes after the bloodshed has been halted.”Meanwhile, NBC News reports that Netanyahu is now moving to Stage Two of his apparent Gaza plan: shipping the citizens of Gaza, who’ve lived there for millennia, to the hellhole of South Sudan.I say “hellhole” from personal experience. I was working in South Sudan about a decade ago with an international relief organization, 15 miles from the Darfur border, distributing food, medicine, and tents to refugees fleeing the Janjaweed murderers.We could see the villages burning on the horizon as desperate people — nearly all women, children and the elderly, as the military-age men had all been killed — flooded into the region. Here’s an excerpt from the diary I kept during that trip:“The land here in South Sudan is vast and flat. The 45,000 people around me share one single hand-pumped well (drilled a decade ago by the United Nations), and no other infrastructure beyond that. No buildings, no roads, no septic or sewage, no schools, no clinics or hospitals, no stores or even storehouses, nothing. Most live on a patch of hard-packed reddish dirt about ten feet square with a few of their possessions marking the perimeters of their ‘home,’ sleeping on the dirt, or on a ragged piece of cloth or, the lucky few, a piece of salvaged tarp from some previous relief mission. Stick-thin women and children with bellies swollen by malnutrition outnumber the men, whose peers were murdered by the Janjaweed or taken as slaves to the north.“The air is so hot and dry that even smells of body odor vanish. My nose is encrusted with dust. The land is barren of any vegetation at all other than the occasional large tree with roots deep enough to reach into the water table thirty or so feet below us. Dust devils blow up and around, tiny cyclones that seem to erupt from nowhere amidst air that is so hot and dry it feels as if we’ve been wrapped in glass wool insulation and tossed into a furnace’s heating duct.“One relief worker I met on the way here, who was leaving the Darfur area via Juba (the capital city with only three short paved streets) on the same small plane that brought us in, said, ‘If there is a hell, it is much like South Sudan.’“This being a refugee community, it is thick with disease, as refugees not only bring diseases with them but are among the most vulnerable of all populations to disease. There’s Buruli ulcer, a flesh-eating and incurable (other than by surgery) disease caused by a bacteria related to leprosy: I saw a case of it yesterday in a little girl who had just arrived from Darfur. She had a hole in the side of her shin that was about four inches long, two inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch deep, nearly down to the bone.“Ebola was first discovered here and in nearby Zaire. Eighty percent of the world’s cases of Guinea Worm disease are here in Southern Sudan: the microscopic eggs are in the guts of tiny, almost invisible sand fleas that infest food and water, and about three months after eating one, the worms hatch. Over the course of the next year they grow throughout the body, often boring out through the skin causing an ulcer that can take months before the worm fully emerges, causing dreadful and incapacitating pain. There is no cure.“In South Sudan sleeping sickness — caused by a parasite named trypanosoma that’s transmitted by the bite of local flies — kills more people than AIDS. This is also the world epicenter of onchocerciasis — another worm that grows more than 1 1/2 feet long inside the body and spreads thousands of eggs to all the organs — soon to become more worms — over the decade or so it takes to kill a person. Sometimes the smaller worms work their way into the cornea, causing blindness which gives this parasite its common name: ‘River Blindness.’“There’s also visceral leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, leprosy, yellow fever, dengue fever, various bacteria and mycoplasma that cause severe and deadly forms of pneumonia, and many, many of the people in this village are infected with malaria (a particularly nasty, drug-resistant, and usually fatal form, P. falciparum, is the most common here in Southern Sudan).”Following Netanyahu’s advice, Trump is also negotiating with South Sudan to take in America’s “illegals” in exchange for cash. They’ve already taken in eight people — none of them even Africans — who Trump shipped over there last month.Nice guys, those two leaders of Israel and America. Along with Putin, “the three caballeros” show what happens when countries are run by entirely self-interested and morbidly rich sociopaths.Forget about commitments, duty, or loyalty: Trump has never, in his entire life, been big on keeping a promise; just ask his three wives or the thousands of small businesses, workers, and customers he’s screwed.So, it makes perfect sense that he and his billionaire land developer buddy Witkoff, who’s now negotiating with Putin and Netanyahu even though he has zero diplomatic experience, would go along with Putin’s Great New Idea to Gaza-ize Ukraine.In fact, in 1994 the US, Ukraine, Great Britain, and Russia signed the Budapest Accord, an agreement that promised America and Britain would defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for them giving up to Russia what was then the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, left over from the old Soviet Union. Putin violated it when he took Ukraine’s Crimea region, and Obama doubled down on the betrayal by largely ignoring the annexation. Biden only reluctantly gave Ukraine aid, and Trump has blocked US military aid for eight months now.Thus, for the first time since Germany invaded Poland and kicked off World War II in 1939, one European nation has invaded another, seized territory, and claimed it as their own.This violation of international law and national sovereignty clearly doesn’t bother Trump or his Republican toadies; just look at his talk about annexing Greenland or making Canada the 51st state in a dime-store imitation of Hitler and Putin.Neither Trump nor the GOP that enables him have any moral compass or core values beyond reestablishing white supremacy, enriching the morbidly rich, and moving women, racial and religious minorities, and the queer community into second-class status subordinate to white “Christian” men.How else could you explain their behavior?I get it that Trump’s former lawyer just this week acknowledged that Katie Johnson had alleged Trump raped her when she was only 13 years old, and he helped deep-six the case. As an adult, she gave sworn testimony in multiple court cases, one transcript published by Politico:“Defendant Trump initiated sexual contact with Plaintiff at four different parties. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted.“Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened Plaintiff that, were she ever to reveal any of the details of the sexual and physical abuse of her by Defendant Trump, Plaintiff and her family would be physically harmed if not killed.”(After her testimony, Johnson received a series of death threats from Trump supporters and has since vanished.)But will sabotaging Ukraine with a Gaza-like deal (and possible eventual resettlement to South Sudan) be enough to get us to stop talking about the possibility that the current President of the United States is a child rapist? Or is Trump just selling out Ukraine to get another billion-dollar real estate deal, this time one in Moscow and St. Petersburg?With this administration and the entire Republican Party having lost any semblance of a moral core, commitment to democracy, or respect for the rule of law, the responsibility for the preservation of American values falls to us and the Democratic Party.Join your local Democrats to shift the Party toward activism, join Indivisible, and any other groups dedicated to restoring democracy to the United States and defending our allies, including Ukraine.Get out in the streets this Saturday.And let your elected officials know where you stand (the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121).Tag, you’re it!

President Donald Trump is no longer having a meeting alone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN's Kaitlan Collins reported ahead of the meeting. She noted that a White House official told reporters on Air Force One that other people would join in the meeting. Collins noted that it was just a few days ago that press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it would be a one-on-one meeting. By Friday, however, that changed to a three-on-three. Joining Trump will be his special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State and Interim National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. "That is a huge development here," she told fellow anchor Jake Tapper, "in terms of the structure of what this meeting is going to look like. And you've got to look at those two voices who are going to be inside the room with President Trump as this goes forward. One Steve Witkoff, who is no stranger to Vladimir Putin and has met with him at length, and actually was in that last meeting with him that set up all of the motion that was put in place."The other, Rubio, previously has taken "a very hard line stance against Russia," she recalled.Collins also recalled that as a senator, Rubio grilled previous officials about whether they thought Putin was a war criminal. Reporter and host Jim Sciutto said that it's likely a smart move "because you want to have multiple witnesses so that you put your own readout, your own spin on it." He also noted that having only Trump or Putin in the meeting allows Putin to be fact-checked on Russian statements and alleviates concerns about what Trump might reveal. See the clip below or at the link here. - YouTube www.youtube.com

Thousands gather for Kabul ‘flower showers’ while women stage protestsThousands of men gathered across Kabul on Friday to watch flowers being scattered from helicopters to mark the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power – a celebration that women were barred from attending.Three of the six “flower shower” locations were already off-limits to women, who have been prohibited from entering parks and recreational areas since November 2022. Continue reading...