https://apnews.com/4e7daf1f26bfb9697bc177efc5ffce73

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian security forces have detained dozens of supporters of a rival to President Mahmoud Abbas who is based in the United Arab Emirates, his political group said Monday.

Mohammed Dahlan, a former senior Palestinian official who was banished from the West Bank in 2010 after a falling-out with Abbas, has denied any role in the UAE’s agreement to normalize ties with Israel, which most Palestinians view as a betrayal of their cause.

Dahlan’s political movement said in a statement that dozens of its members have been detained or summoned for questioning by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank in recent days, calling it a “stark violation of the law.”

Palestinian security officials declined to comment.

Dahlan, a former security chief in Gaza, has long been seen as a potential successor to the 84-year-old Abbas. In exile, Dahlan has cultivated close ties with Egypt and the UAE, where he is based.

His forces battled the Islamic militant group Hamas in the months before it seized power in Gaza in 2007, but in recent years he has worked with them to provide aid to the territory, which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the takeover.

He has denied having any political aspirations, but the aid has helped him to develop a small base of support in Gaza. The UAE deal has stoked speculation he may stage a return to Palestinian politics.

The decision of the UAE and the small Gulf nation of Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel has upended the longstanding Arab consensus that recognition should only be granted in return for concessions in the peace process, leaving the Palestinians increasingly isolated.

Abbas has seen his popularity drop in recent years as he has failed to end the Israeli occupation, the blockade of Gaza or the internal political split with Hamas. His Palestinian Authority is widely seen as corrupt and dysfunctional. The Palestinians have not held elections since the split with Hamas, and Abbas has not named a successor.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-fires-norfolk-naval-shipyard-commander

The commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia has been fired, the Navy announced on Monday.

Capt. Kai Torkelson was relieved of command on Monday “due to a loss of confidence his is ability to command,” a terse Navy news release says.

The news release did not indicate why Vice Adm. Bill Galinis, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command, had lost confidence in Torkelson.

A NAVSEA spokesman told Task & Purpose on Monday that Torkelson is not under investigation.

Torkelson is a third-generation naval officer, who was commissioned by the Virginia Military Institute Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps in 1991, according to his Navy biography.

Initially trained as a submariner, Torkelson moved into the engineering community in 2002 and went on to travel to 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces to rebuild the country’s military bases.

He became commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard on June 29, 2018.

His military awards include the Bronze Star along with the Meritorious Service, Navy Commendation and Navy Achievement Medals.

Is hollywood doing propaganda vids for China ?

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/09/21/chinese-video-showing-simulated-attack-u-s-base-included-scenes-transformers-revenge-fallen/

The Chinese attempt to look tough took a hit when people quickly realized several images that appear in the clip were taken directly from American films including Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The video initially attracted praise from many patriotic netizens, who called the attack a “strike by the god of warriors to guard the sky of the motherland.” But their feel-good bubble soon burst after the scenes were linked to the PLA’s presumable enemy in the video.

At 1:07 of the video, a huge fireball erupts from the H-6K’s airstrike. It turns out to be identical to the opening scene of the 2010 Best-Picture Oscar Award winner “The Hurt Locker.”

Another scene depicting a missile flying towards the military base fired by an air force commander was discovered to be taken from a scene in Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” released in 2009. Netizens also noticed that a third scene, showing a massive explosion at a military base, seems to come from the movie “The Rock,” also directed by Bay.

>>10734378

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-ricin-canada/canada-police-say-six-ricin-laced-letters-sent-to-u-s-including-white-house-idUKKCN26C2EX

LONGUEUIL, Quebec (Reuters) - Canadian police on Monday searched an apartment in a Montreal suburb linked to the woman arrested for sending a ricin-filled envelope to the White House and to five other addresses in Texas, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said.

U.S. authorities arrested a woman at the U.S.-Canada border near Buffalo, New York, on Sunday on suspicion that she sent the deadly poison by mail, addressed to the White House. The woman has joint Canadian and French citizenship, two sources said on Monday.

She will appear on Tuesday at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) in Buffalo before Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder, Jr., a spokeswoman for the federal court in the Western District of New York said.

“We believe a total of six letters were sent, one to the White House and five to Texas,” RCMP officer Charles Poirier said outside the modern brown and grey building where the search was taking place. “We can’t confirm that she lived in (the apartment), but it is connected to her.”

Poirier could not say where in Texas the envelopes were mailed, but the police department in Mission, Texas, received a suspicious letter within the last week, Art Flores, a spokesman for the department, said. The department did not open the envelope and turned it over to the FBI, he said.

Flores also said the Mission police had arrested the woman now believed to be held in Buffalo in early 2019, but said he did not have records related to the arrest and referred further inquiries to the FBI.

The FBI is investigating several suspected ricin letters sent to law enforcement and detention facilities in South Texas, a U.S. law enforcement source told Reuters.

So far they have not found any link to political or terrorist groups, but the investigation is ongoing, the source said.

The RCMP’s special Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives team is leading the operation, the RCMP said.