I missed the bit where Australia declared war on Russia?

Australian troops deployed to train Ukrainian soldiers in fight against Russia

Up to 70 Australian soldiers will travel to the United Kingdom in coming days to begin training Ukrainian troops in the fight against Russia.

The Australian Defence Force personnel will be farewelled at a ceremony in Darwin before joining the British-led Operation Interflex, which aims to train 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers this year.

Defence Minister Richard Marles told Today this morning the Australian military trainers will play a vital role and help Ukraine "stay in the fight" against Russia.

"We need to be ready and willing, which we are, to stand with Ukraine over the long term. This is an important step in doing that."

He said the Australian instructors would help train Ukraine's military, which is largely composed of reservists.

"I think people need to understand that those who are fighting in Ukraine now, it's a reservist force.

"They're citizen solders, giving up every day jobs in order to fight for their country. The heart is very much there, but this training is going to be so important for them to equip them for the battlefield."

As part of their preparation for the training mission, the Australian soldiers have familiarised themselves with the AK-47 assault rifle, the main weapon used by Ukraine's army in combat.

Operation Interflex has been running since last July. Australian military trainers over will join others from other western nations including New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands.

Australia has already contributed more than $500,000 in military aid and humanitarian supplies for Ukraine, including about 30 Bushmaster armoured vehicles.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/russia-ukraine-update-australian-soldiers-to-train-ukrainian-army/71da721f-ac9d-4733-bab4-225b0868ca6f

Microsoft Reportedly Plans To Cut Thousands Of Jobs This Week

Update (1430ET):

Here's what people are saying about potential layoffs on an anonymous community app for the workplace called Blind:

"Microsoft does it in smaller phases and doesn't cause a ripple in the news cycle," someone said.

Remember, Microsoft offered US employees unlimited time off last week. Here's what another person on Blind said:

"Switching to unlimited PTO is not a good sign though, because MSFT won't have to pay out any Unused PTO when they do layoffs."

Someone else said:

"A massive number of managers in Bing got a critical confidential meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning. Other than that, everything else I know about the layoff came from unconfirmed sources on Blind. But the time of this mass meeting lines up with the speculated Jan 17 - 18 layoff date."

Update (1404ET):

Bloomberg now reports Microsoft plans to reduce jobs in engineering divisions on Wednesday.

The magnitude of the cuts couldn't be learned, but the person, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential matters, said the reduction will be significantly larger than other rounds in the past year. Those cuts impacted less than 1% of the software giant's workforce of more than 200,000.

The US tech sector layoffs continue with news that Microsoft could reduce its headcount by thousands of jobs.

Sky News learned that the US tech giant is "finalizing plans" to reduce its workforce amid mounting macroeconomic headwinds. The announcement could come in the next few days. There was no mention of which jobs were at risk.

The latest filings show Microsoft's total workforce is around 220,000 people. Sky News said the company is mulling over a reduction of 5% of its workforce, or about 11,000 jobs.

"That figure could not be verified on Tuesday evening, and one analyst suggested that Wall Street would be surprised if the figure was not higher than that," noted the British paper.

Microsoft has gone on a hiring spree in the last several years.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/microsoft-plans-cut-thousands-jobs-sky-news-reports

Vietnamese president resigns, criticised for major scandals

Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned Tuesday, becoming the most senior member of the government to step down after a series of high-profile corruption scandals for which he was held responsible.

The state Vietnam News Agency reported that he had resigned at a session of the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee that was held "to consider and give opinions on Comrade Nguyen Xuan Phuc's wish to stop holding positions, quit work and retire."

The language of the announcement strongly suggested that he was forced to step down.

https://www.9news.com.au/world/vietnamese-president-resigns-criticised-for-major-scandals/178be4b3-d3fc-4408-b692-a078a6e5752e

>>18163333

>>18163419

He's not talking about us

he's talking about mainstream social media sites 'pseudonymous' posters

“His Property Has to Be Searched for National Security Purposes” – Rudy Giuliani on Actions to Take Against Biden

Former New York City Mayor and attorney for President Trump, Rudy Giuliani was on the War Room this morning to discuss the Biden classified document scandal. As usual, Rudy knocked it out of the park.

Steve Bannon asked Rudy Giuliani a few questions about Joe Biden’s document scandal. This comes after multiple batches of documents were located at Biden’s property and at the Biden Center at Penn U.

In July 2022, White House Counsel Dana Ann Remus announced that she would be leaving the White House. Prior to this, she was general counsel for Biden’s Presidential campaign.

She reportedly now works for Biden as his personal attorney and was reportedly on-site at Penn U when classified documents turned up at Biden’s office there.

Bannan asked Guiliani starting off by noting that Remus was located:

…at the Penn Biden Center rumaging around finding highly classified documents. Is that the way the city works? Do you send over lawyers making $2500 an hour, $2,000 an hour, do you send her over? Is she the one that, is she just showing up in a closet and finding highly classified, top secret and classified documents, sir?

Rudy replied:

Of course not. The reality is that we don’t know enough to know what did she know to go there. Remember Biden says, I don’t remember anything about these documents, so how did she know to go to that exact spot.

Did Biden at some point know? Is he lying? Does someboy else know?

Second, you send a lawyer because you’re in trouble. I mean if you weren’t in trouble, you’d call the government and you’d say ‘hey guys, go take a look. I think I may have forgotten but someone tells me there are documnets there’.

Then when they do tell the government they deliberatly suppress that information while they’re beating the living daylights out of Trump.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/property-searched-national-security-purposes-rudy-giuliani-actions-take-biden/

President Trump: “I’m fighting the Deep State & winning…I think I’m a very nice person, but if we’re gonna win, we have to be tough and we have to fight back…

If I fight back, you don’t sound as nice as you should, but we’re all winning together. Make America Great Again.”

https://twitter.com/DailyNoahNews/status/1615148075370119177

How prisons, drug smugglers and the war in Ukraine made Australia's DroneShield a global success

On January 1, at the inauguration of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, police detected four unidentified drones converging on the new head of state.

Unmanned aerial vehicles had been used in an assassination attempt on a South American leader before, but this time the security forces were prepared.

Key points:

The use of drones in the Ukraine war has led to governments stocking up on technology that can detect and neutralise the aerial vehicles

An Australian company is filling orders from around the world for drone guns

Experts say the global market is enormous

Moments later, presidential bodyguards used a relatively new kind of drone gun to jam and "take down" the four suspicious aircraft, according to reports.

Images from the event showed men in dark suits with enormous, unusually designed rifles.

As it turns out, they were drone guns made by a Sydney-based company that has recently scored a series of big contracts with government agencies.

Founded eight years ago after a modest crowdfunding campaign, DroneShield is now riding a wave of demand for drone counter-measures. Its success is partly the result of high-profile incidents such as the one in Brazil, as well as the unprecedented use of drones in the war in Ukraine.

So how did an Australian company find itself selling cutting-edge drone technology to the world?

Betting on the dark side of drone applications

The story of DroneShield is about the thousands of different and often unexpected uses that have been found for drones within a short space of time.

In just eight years, small and cheap "quadcopter" drones have gone from playthings to tools of war, espionage, smuggling and terrorism.

"Drones at the beginning were literally a toy for kids, and now they're being used in war," said Brian Hearing, who co-founded DroneShield in 2014.

Back then, he and DroneShield co-founder John Franklin thought the main customers for drone counter-measures would be hotels and celebrities worried about paparazzi.

"There were anecdotal reports of drones being flown over your neighbour's pool — we thought privacy issues were going to be the main driver."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-01-18/droneshield-selling-drone-counter-measures-detection-guns/101852562

Rachel Levine Cozied Up With Activists To Fight Bill Blocking State Funding For Child Sex Changes

Rachel Levine, now Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, communicated with and encouraged various groups that were fighting against Pennsylvania legislation that would have blocked taxpayer funding for child sex changes in 2017, according to emails and social media posts.

Levine was pictured with LGBT activists earlier that year, who claimed to have met with Levine to fight for taxpayer funding for child sex changes.

“Gender-affirming surgeries will be unattainable for many transgender people who need them, depriving them of lasting concordance with their gendered self and enhanced psychological wellbeing and overall health,” a letter from two plastic surgeon groups to state lawmakers read; one surgeon shared the letter with Levine, who thanked him and said it was “great.”

Rachel Levine, who is now Assistant Secretary for Health in the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), communicated and huddled with opponents of a Pennsylvania bill that would have blocked taxpayer funding for child sex changes in 2017, according to social media posts and emails reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Pennsylvania House Bill 1933 would have ended taxpayer funding for cross-sex medical treatments for minors, but the bill failed to pass following vocal opposition from activists and groups of plastic surgeons who communicated with Levine, according to emails obtained by parental rights activist Megan Brock through a documents request and shared with the DCNF. Levine, who at the time was the state’s acting secretary of health, thanked University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Plastic Surgery Chief Joseph Losee for a letter he had shared in opposition to HB 1933 on behalf of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) and the Robert H. Ivy Pennsylvania Society of Plastic Surgeons.

“This is great. Thank you very much,” Levine wrote in an email to Losee after Losee shared it with Levine and Sarah Boateng, who at the time was executive deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

The letter urged members of the Pennsylvania Legislature to vote against HB 1933, arguing that denying children access to “gender affirming” plastic surgeries would rob them of health and well-being. The presidents of the ASPS and the Ivy Society signed the letter, and Losee shared it with Levine on Dec. 4, 2017, the day the letter was dated; it is unclear what role Losee played in orchestrating the letter.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/17/rachel-levine-surgeons-state-funding-child-sex-changes-transgender/

>>18163741

>McAfee

fuck off