from A Collection of Short Stories

Reading US internet in the middle of the night is so fun it just radiates absolute fear + malice + delusion but none of it is real anymore please be safe burgers.... be safe

@NewsWire_US

The Progress MS-34 cargo spacecraft will deliver 2.5 tons of cargo to the International Space Station, including a new Orlan-ISS No. 8 EVA spacesuit

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. The Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket with the Progress MS-34 cargo spacecraft has been assembled at the Baikonur spaceport for the subsequent launch on April 26 to the International Space Station (ISS), Roscosmos reported.

"The Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket with the Progress MS-34 is at the launch site at Baikonur. The rocket was rolled out and erected vertically on the launch pad," the statement reads.

The Progress MS-34 cargo spacecraft will deliver 2.5 tons of cargo to the International Space Station, including a new Orlan-ISS No. 8 EVA spacesuit. The equipment and consumables also include hardware for the Virtual, Neuroimmunity, Correction, Biodegradation, and Separation experiments.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11405210

The foreign ministers of Niger and Mali have accused neighbouring countries of sponsoring terrorism, but said they were willing to cooperate on some matters with the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, from which they formally split last year.

The accusations, made on the sidelines of a security forum in Diamniadio, Senegal, late on Monday, underscore regional rifts in West Africa that can complicate efforts to curb jihadist violence across the Sahel, a semi-arid belt of land stretching across Africa.

Mali, Niger and neighbouring Burkina Faso have been battling jihadist insurgencies for over a decade. All three countries are led by military governments which seized power in coups and then broke away from ECOWAS to form their own bloc, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

There are neighbouring countries that are currently harbouring terrorist groups, supporting terrorist groups, or frequently receiving hostile forces that carry out operations against us, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told Reuters.

He declined to name which neighbours he was referring to but added that foreign powers outside the region were also involved. He said Ukrainian mercenaries had attacked Mali and claimed responsibility, in an apparent reference to comments by a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) about fighting in northern Mali in 2024. Ukraine said at the time there was no evidence that it had played a role in the fighting. It has since denied supplying drones to rebels in the north of Mali.

Tensions have also been high between Mali and Mauritania in recent weeks, with Mali claiming two of its soldiers were held by armed groups across the border, and Mauritania saying it was offended by the claim, which it denied.

READ MORE: Nigeria’s Defence Minister Matawalle Attempted to Bribe US Official to Cover Up Report on Christian Killings, Says Florida Rep

Niger’s Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare said in a speech at the forum that many countries seeking to cooperate with Niger on counterterrorism are also “fuelling, financing and sustaining” terrorism in the country. He told Reuters he was referring to France. The French foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Niger’s military ruler Abdourahamane Tiani in January blamed French, Benin and Ivory Coast presidents for sponsoring an attack on the country’s international airport, an accusation he made without offering any evidence.

The current chairman of ECOWAS, Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, appealed to the AES states to either rejoin the regional bloc or collaborate more with it. But Mali’s Diop told Reuters that “Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, politically speaking, have withdrawn from ECOWAS.”

Our withdrawal is final, so there’s no point in saying we’re asking people to come back.

Nevertheless, Diop added that AES could maintain a constructive dialogue with ECOWAS on freedom of movement and preserving a common market.

About The Author

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/39244480

Russia's Africa Corps in Mali have liberated one Russian and one Ukrainian nationals who were abducted by terrorists in Niger in July 2024, the Russian defense ministry said.

TASS has summed up what is known about this to this moment.

Rescue operation

A special operation resulted in the release of the employees of a Russian geological exploration company who were kidnapped in July 2024, the Russian defense ministry said.

The men were captured in Niger by the terrorist group Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin’ (affiliates itself with the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda that is outlawed in Russia).

The operation was conducted by the Africa Corps in Mali.

It took the Africa Corps servicemen "literally one hour" to complete the operation, one of the former captives said.

Condition of the released

The two released men are Russian citizen, Oleg Gret, born in 1962, and a citizen of Ukraine, Yury Yurov, born in 1970.

The men who were released from captivity in Mali have been diagnosed with multiple illnesses and severe physical exhaustion.

The former hostages will be transported by Russian military transport aircraft to Moscow for treatment and rehabilitation.

The former captive’s activity

According to one of the former hostages, they were employed by a Russian geological company.

He said that he plans to return after rehabilitation and continue to work as a geologist.

The Belgin Sultan floating power plant in Havana

Turkey is providing support to Cuba, where millions of people remain in the dark due to the tightening of U.S. embargoes and the collapse of its energy infrastructure. The ship, sent by Karpowership (part of Karadeniz Holding), has already begun generating electricity in Havana.

Following the second total collapse of the national grid in a short period, which left nearly 10 million people without electricity, the Cuban government has turned to the Turkish model of floating power plants for their ability to offer quick and effective solutions, according to Yeni Akit Gazetesi.

The Belgin Sultan vessel, already docked in the Port of Havana, will serve as a “lifeline” for an aging island infrastructure suffering from severe fuel supply problems.

The Karpowership fleet, selected to address the energy deficit, consists of high-tech power plants installed on ships.

These floating power plants, capable of operating on liquefied natural gas (LNG), natural gas, and liquid fuel, play a vital role in crisis zones because—unlike land-based facilities—they can be integrated into the grid quickly.

With the commissioning of the Belgin Sultan, the aim is to significantly reduce chronic power outages in the capital, Havana, and its surrounding areas.

Cuba is pursuing a multifaceted strategy to stabilize its energy supply. While on one hand it is leveraging Turkey’s floating power plant technology, on the other it is trying to stay afloat thanks to fuel support from Russia.

This follows the arrival in March of a shipment of 700,000 barrels of Russian crude oil aboard the Anatoly Kolodkin—which is subject to U.S. sanctions—which unloaded at the Cuban port of Matanzas. The Turkish media reported that a second shipment is already en route to Cuba.

In line with reports in the Turkish press, this technological support provided by Turkey is considered a strategic achievement in ensuring the Cuban people’s access to energy.

I think that this is yet another sign of the growing defiance of more and more governments in the face of Trump’s bluster. Now Turkey has joined the ranks. There is no doubt: the empire is becoming a little more impotent every day, and there is no turning back.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English

Cuban doctors and nurses bid farewell in Havana as they leave for Turkey to treat victims of the 2023 earthquake. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP

For decades, Cuban doctors have served the Caribbean’s most marginalized. Now, as Cuba faces its own crisis, the region looks away, waiting on Trump’s approval.

There is a line, often quoted, seldom practiced, from the Christian gospels: “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is recited from the Americas to Africa, invoked in speeches, embroidered into national mottoes.

But like many moral injunctions, it has proven easier to proclaim than to live by. Across the Caribbean and Latin America, something extraordinary and shameful is unfolding.

Cuban doctors**,** emissaries of one of the world’s most besieged nations, are being expelled from host nations, contracts terminated, health programs dismantled. And, in their absence, the poorest will pay – in untreated illnesses, unattended births, undiagnosed cancers. The region is, in effect, amputating its own lifeline – under pressure from the US.

On Friday the Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez accused the US of “extorting” countries by forcing them to cancel decades-old deals with Havana for the supply of doctors.

The tone was set in Donald Trump’s first term. In 2018, 8,300 Cuban doctors left Brazil after the country’s then president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, closely aligned with Washington, threatened the programme and its payment structure, questioning the qualifications of the Cubans – issues that had never been raised when their services were indispensable.

Since then, the US has pushed countries across the region to terminate these agreements, branding them “forced labor” and even “human trafficking” because the Cuban state retains a share of salaries. Conveniently ignoring that these doctors were trained free of charge by the Cuban government, unlike their heavily indebted counterparts in countries such as the UK where medical graduates have the onerous burden of student debt for decades.

The consequences have been enormous. Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines have all capitulated. Across the Caribbean and Latin America, programmes, some as old as 50 years, are being dismantled, doctors withdrawn and already fragile systems strained, all under the threat of US visa and diplomatic sanctions. Only St Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago have yet to follow. Millions could lose basic healthcare, with Indigenous communities particularly exposed.

What is being done to Cuba is not ‘pressure’. It’s economic warfare, and the Caribbean and Latin America are complicit

Cuba is the island that chose “doctors, not bombs”. For more than six decades, Cuba has practiced something profoundly unfashionable in modern geopolitics: solidarity. When Ebola tore through west Africa in 2014, Cuban medical brigades arrived first. When hurricanes flattened Caribbean states, Cuban teams showed up. When Haiti collapsed, again, under the weight of history, debt and disaster, Cuban doctors were there. When Nepal was devastated in 2015, Cuba dispatched a medical brigade within days.

Cuba has built a global medical network of more than 50,000 professionals working across dozens of countries, generating billions in foreign revenue and sustaining its economy under embargo. In places such as Venezuela, where tens of thousands of Cubans once staffed community health programmes, these missions became central to public health. But that model is now under strain. As US pressure intensifies – disrupting oil, tightening sanctions and targeting allied governments – Cuban medical personnel are being withdrawn, cutting off one of the island’s few reliable sources of income while weakening healthcare systems abroad.

students from African countries training at the Latin American School of Medicine. foto: Bill Hackwell

Cuba has also trained tens of thousands of foreign students, including from the Caribbean, at its Latin American School of Medicine. All free of charge. Yet this same island, 90 miles from Florida, under embargo since 1962, is being economically strangled into submission.

What is being brought down on Cuba is not “pressure”. It is economic warfare and the Caribbean and Latin America are complicit.

Sanctions, in reality, are blunt instruments. They restrict trade, finance, fuel and medicine, shrink economies, deepen poverty and punish citizens rather than governments. In Cuba, the effects are stark: blackouts, shortages and collapsing productivity. A steady erosion of daily life. Now, with fuel supplies disrupted, the country faces its most acute crisis in decades and, precisely when solidarity is most required, the Caribbean and Latin America have chosen distance.

There was a time when Caribbean leadership spoke differently. In the 1970s, Jamaica’s prime minister, Michael Manley, called Cuba “fundamental” to the region, a partner in the struggle against imperialism, a “brave and brilliant social experiment”. He knew that small states survive not by submission but by solidarity.

Today, the tone has shifted. Andrew Holness, the current prime minister of Jamaica, while acknowledging the value of Cuban doctors, speaks of compliance and legality. Pragmatism has a way of sliding into acquiescence.

More striking is the transformation in Trinidad and Tobago. The prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, once an admirer of Fidel Castro, now echoes Trump’s condemnation of her near neighbor while entertaining deeper US military presence, genuflecting to the dictatorial US president and fawning over his minion, Marco Rubio.

Against this tide stands Barbados, which although it does not currently have Cuban medical staff, benefited from them during the Covid pandemic. Prime minister Mia Mottley has defended Cuba’s medical missions, rejected the insinuation of “trafficking” and made clear that Barbados would stand by what is right, even at the cost of US punishments. It is a reminder that sovereignty is not merely constitutional; it is moral.

So why are Trump and Rubio’s tentacles stretching towards Cuba? Strategically, Cuba sits astride vital shipping lanes, near the Gulf of Mexico, close to the Panama routes. Economically, it holds – but lacks the investment to extract – estimated offshore oil reserves of more than 4bn barrels. It has nickel, cobalt and huge tourism potential, making it another potential Trump Riviera.

Geopolitically, it remains a contested foothold, and historically has refused to yield. From the failed US Bay of Pigs invasion to decades of embargo and isolation, the objective has remained constant: regime change. What has changed is the method.

What is striking is not Washington’s predictable posture but the Caribbean’s response. Or lack of it. Caricom, once vocal in calling for the end of the embargo, appears hesitant. Aid arrives in Cuba from as far as Russia and Spain. Yet from neighboring islands, those who benefited directly from Cuban doctors, there is little more than cautious diplomacy. This shows cowardly fear of US repercussions.

On 30 March, the chair of Caricom, Dr Terrance Drew, said the mechanism “is fully on the way” and “Caricom will update” to extend the promised humanitarian help to Cuba. For now, it remains just that – waiting for an update.

For decades, Cuban doctors have served, quietly and without fanfare, the Caribbean’s most marginalized: rural communities, underfunded hospitals, disaster zones. Now, as Cuba faces its own crisis, the region looks away, waiting on Trump’s approval.

Perhaps this is geopolitics. Perhaps it is realism. Or fear. But let us not pretend it is moral. “Love thy neighbor” was never meant to be conditional on visas, trade agreements or approval from distant powers. It was meant precisely for moments like this – when standing by a neighbor is inconvenient.

The Caribbean likes to imagine itself as a community, bound by history, culture and struggle. But in this moment, faced with the expulsion of those who healed us, the region must ask itself the question: when Cuba needed us, where were we?

Source: The Guardian

lmao somehow this has not been posted here yet

from Loveless, which everyone and their mom has heard by now

★ Still Tippin

@oldscarf1stweek

3:51am [2026-04-18] Massachusetts

@NorthernSkies5