PN>>18538005

Does anyone think this is a coordinated plan. I always thought Trump chipped into twitter

19 Mar, 2023 22:20

Swiss banks announce historic takeover

Banking giant UBS has reached a deal to acquire its ailing rival Credit Suisse

UBS Group and Credit Suisse Group, two of the biggest names in European banking, are coming together in a government-brokered deal aimed at shoring up public confidence in the Western financial system and averting a global crisis.

UBS agreed on Sunday to pay 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.24 billion) in stock to acquire its embattled rival in a takeover underpinned by government guarantees and 100 billion francs in liquidity assistance from Switzerland’s central bank. The agreed price of 1 UBS share for each22.48 shares of Credit Suisse values the latter bank at less than half its market closing priceon Friday. The transaction requires UBS to absorb up to $5.4 billion in losses at Credit Suisse.

“I welcome the swift action and the decisions taken by the Swiss authorities,” European Central Bank President Christine Legarde saidof the merger. “They are instrumental for restoring orderly market conditions and ensuring financial stability.” Although the region’s banking sector is “resilient,” she added, “our policy toolkit is fully equipped to provide liquidity support to the euro area financial system if needed and to preserve the smooth transmission of monetary policy.”

The merger of Switzerland’s two biggest Swiss banks is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Western governments and central banks have sought to prevent a cascade of bank failures after the collapses earlier this month of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the US.

Credit Suisse last month reported a 2022 net loss of 7.3 billion francs and warned that it would incur another “substantial” loss in 2023 before returning to profitability in 2024. With clients withdrawing their money in droves, Credit Suisse turned to the Swiss central bank for a loan of 50 billion francs last week.

The newly combined bankwill boast more than $5 trillion of invested assets(Not for long). UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher told reporters at a press briefing in Bern, Switzerland, that there are “no options” other than closing the acquisition and making it a success. “This is absolutely essential to the financial structure of Switzerland and… to global finance.”

(We welcome the chaos of our major banks that underpin our society that are failing and fucked up royally, and “never changed what we did three years ago when we going to fail”. Nord Stream Karma, this will be very interesting.)

https://www.rt.com/business/573253-ubs-credit-suisse-takeover/

19 Mar, 2023 21:17

==Poland may end up ‘joining’ Ukraine conflict – diplomat•=

Warsaw will have “no choice” but to take part in the hostilities should Kiev fail to defend its “independence,” the country’s envoy to France has said

Poland may end up “joining” the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine should the latter fail to protect its “independence,” the Polish ambassador to France, Jan Emeryk Rosciszewski, has said. The senior diplomat made the remarks on Saturday while speaking live to the broadcaster LCI.

Rosciszewski squarely blamed the hostilities, which have been ongoing for over a year already, on Moscow, stating that it was “not NATO, not Poland, not France and not Slovakia” that was ramping up international tensions, but Russia. According to the diplomat, the situation now is “either Ukraine will successfully defend its independence, or we will be forced, in any case, to join this conflict.”

“Otherwise, our principal values, which are the basis of our civilization and our culture, will be in fundamental danger, so we will have no choice,” Rosciszewski stated.

The hawkish statement promptly made headlines in international media, prompting the Polish mission in France to elaborate further on the remarks made by its head. According to a message released by the embassy on Sunday, Rosciszewski’s comments were not actually an admission that Warsaw was ready to go to war with Russia, but merely a “warning” and a pledge to continue supporting Kiev.

“Listening carefully to the entire conversation allows us to understand that there was no announcement of Poland’s direct involvement in the conflict, but only a warning against the consequences of Ukraine's defeat – the possibility of Russia attacking or dragging into the war more Central European countries – the Baltic states and Poland,” the statement reads. The embassy also condemned the purportedly “sensational” reporting on the bombshell interview, suggesting that some unidentified media outlets may have acted in “ill will.”

The remarks received a poor reception in Moscow, with a top Russian senator, Alexey Pushkov, warning Warsaw of the potential consequences and questioning its presumed resolve to fight Russia on its own.

“A very presumptuous statement by the Polish ambassador in Paris. For the first time, an official representative of Poland said what its leaders have long had on their minds. However, all the ‘courage’ of the Poles is based on the support of the United States. Is Warsaw sure that Washington is ready to fight?” Pushkov said in a Telegram post.

Poland has been among the most active supporters of Kiev in the hostilities against Russia, sending in assorted military hardware, including tanks and artillery pieces, to prop up Ukraine. Apart from that, Polish mercenaries have been directly involved in the conflict in significant numbers, according to Moscow. Warsaw has also announced a major military buildup of its own, seeking to greatly expand the ranks of its armed forces and procure large amounts of modern military hardware from overseas.

(Major Bluff, Poland has wanted to annex large parts of Ukraine for years. NATO will not initiate this war with EU for Polands disappointment that Ukraine cannot succeed)

https://www.rt.com/news/573250-poland-joining-ukraine-conflict/

19 Mar, 2023 21:12

Charity defends ‘inclusivity guide’ that triggered fact-checks

Snopes stepped in to confirm that Oxfam really did call English the “language of a colonizing nation” after a backlash

(Snopes? really?? Unbelievable)

Global anti-poverty charity Oxfam’s new “inclusive language guide,” a 92-page tome billed as a must-have for NGOs “who have to communicate in English,” has elicited indignation and even a fact-check following its publication earlier this week.

The guide is “based on a set of feminist principles for language use that centre the power and agency of people experiencing inequality,” a press release accompanying its publication states. Terms that might offend a marginalized group are printed alongside preferred alternatives, some of which go far beyond familiar terminology.

Instead of “expectant mothers,” for example, the guide suggests “people who become pregnant.” “Prostitutes” are replaced by “people who sell sex”; “the blind” become “people with visual impairment”; “the elderly”and “youth” are recast as “elderly people” and “young people.” However, the document also cautions that using the term “people” could be perceived as “patriarchal,” because “it is often misunderstood as only referring to men.”

The guide calls English “the language of a colonising nation” in its introduction, lamenting the “Anglo-supremacy” of the nonprofit sector as “one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power.” While Oxfam has “been guilty of ‘white savior’ narratives” in the past, the charity insists it is “learning from decolonial activists to change that.”

The guide was pilloried on social media and picked up by Fox News and other media outlets on Thursday. Advocacy workers questioned the utility of playing language police when “women in sub-Saharan Africa have a one in 37 chance of dying in pregnancy and labour,” as international development researcher Maya Forstater told The Telegraph.

Even Snopes, the notorious fact-checking website, stepped in on Thursday to verify the claim that Oxfam had in fact published a language handbook that “advises people to avoid use of the words ‘mother’ and ‘youth.’”The verdict turned out to be true, though Snopes stressed that Oxfam was not trying to “ban or abolish the use of these words.”

Oxfam merely doubled down amid the backlash, taking to Twitter to defend advising volunteers to “avoid assuming the adoption of gendered roles [i.e. mother and father] by transgender parents” on Thursday. Accusing critics of “cropping the document” to exclude context, the charity claimed the guide wasn’t meant to be “prescriptive” but merely to be “respectful to the diverse language of people with which we work.”

(Isn’t Oxfam the organization that raped female children and adults in Africa and other countries!)

https://www.rt.com/news/573249-oxfam-woke-language-guide-backlash/

>>18542067

So now you want red text now?Fucking funny anon, its just words, you can read words right?

>>18542080

It’s almost like EU countries are filled with rage or something

19 Mar, 2023 17:44

Elon Musk fact-checks Biden on tax claim

Twitter’s owner has shot down the US president’s assertion that billionaires pay only 3% of their earnings to the government

America’s richest man on Saturday took issue with President Joe Biden’s effort to sell voters on tax increases by claiming that billionaires get away with paying only 3% of their earnings, on average, to the federal government.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed back after Biden posted a Twitter message arguing that the mega-rich aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. “You know the average tax billionaires pay?” Biden asked, before answering the question himself with his 3% claim. “No billionaire should be paying a lower tax than somebody working as a schoolteacher or a firefighter.”

Musk replied, “I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% federal and 13% state), so I must be lifting the average!I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022.”He then invited Twitter users in the platform’s Community Notes program to weigh in on whether the 3% figure was accurate.

Biden’s 2024 budget proposal calls for raising tax rates on individuals with earnings of more than $400,000 a year and married couples making over $450,000. He also has demanded a 25% minimum tax on Americans with fortunes exceeding $100 million.

“Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share,” Biden said. “I think you ought to pay a minimum tax of 25%. It’s about basic fairness.”

Musk countered, “I certainly agree that everyone should pay taxes and not engage in elaborate tax-avoidance schemes.” Such schemes aren’t necessary for low-income Americans because more than 40% of US households pay no federal income tax.

https://www.rt.com/news/573246-musk-refutes-biden-tax-claim/

(Look at the photo, Kushner there)

19 Mar, 2023 18:57

Pentagon assesses cancer risks for US pilots

A study has found that military air crews suffer high rates of melanoma and other cancers

US military aviators contract various forms of cancer far more frequently than Americans at large, a long-awaited Pentagon study has revealed, confirming the suspicions of pilots and surviving family members who had long suggested that their disease and death rates seemed unusually high.

The investigation, which was reported by media outlets on Sunday, found that overallcancer rates were 24% above normal for members of air crews who served between 1992 and 2017. Rates were 87% higher than average for melanoma and 39% higher for thyroid cancer. Male pilots and crewmen face a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer, while female air crew veterans have a 16% higher rate of breast cancer.

The multi-year study, which was based on health outcomes for nearly 900,000 service members, also revealed that members ofground crewshad elevated risks of various cancer types, including a 19% higher rate of brain cancers, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancers and a 9% higher rate of kidney or renal cancers. The Pentagon acknowledged that its evaluation likely undercounted cancer cases because its data was unreliable for earlier generations of pilots.

Congress ordered the broad study in 2021, after years of lobbying by former military pilots andfamily members who suspected for years that exposure to potential carcinogens in jet fuels, radar systemsand other possible hazards was killing many veterans. Now that the initial review has confirmed high cancer rates, a second phase of the study will examine possible reasons.

A narrower study completed in 2021 looked only at US Air Force pilots and compared their cancer rates to those of service members in general. That review, which encompassed nearly 35,000 pilots and crew members who served between 1970 and 2004, found that rates of testicular, prostate and skin cancer were 23-30% above normal. Pilots who flew the F-100 Super Sabre, America’s first supersonic fighter jet, were “more likely to be diagnosed with, and die from, cancers of the colon and rectum, pancreas, melanoma, skin, prostate and brain,” the earlier assessment said.

The latest study comes to light after the US Air Force launched an investigation last month into cancer risks for service members who worked in America’s nuclear missile silos. A preliminary review showed high rates of lymphoma among missileers who worked at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base.

https://www.rt.com/news/573248-pentagon-study-pilots-high-cancer-rates/

Thank God my brother did this job in the 1960s for the Navy. He did have cancer though

The bizarre thing is neither one of them would have the reputation they have today, if not for Trumpand a newcomer would have to remind them

https://twitter.com/redvoicenews/status/1637412190855774209?s=20

Wow Graham shouts to a constituent,Just shut up. Graham just bought his ticket!

https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1637412153828298754?s=20

>>18542256

Ever again!

Whoever is advising DeSantis is trying to make him lose! Or he’s stupid.

https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1637218542167662594?s=20

>>18542247

Schumer and the NY mafia didn’t think McConnell was harsh enough on Tucker. He got the same treatment as Harry Reid.