13 Nov, 2023 16:47

Sister of former US president dies

Maryanne Trump Barry was a retired federal judge and the older sister of President Donald Trump

Maryanne Trump Barry, 86, the oldest sibling of former US President Donald Trump, was found dead on Monday in her New York City apartment.

Police found her lifeless body inside the 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side at around 4am, according to the Post Millennial.The city’s medical examiner has not yet announced the cause of death, but police said there were no signs of trauma or foul play.

Born in 1937, Maryanne was the oldest of the five Trump brothers and sisters. She was nominated to the US District Court in New Jersey by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and to the US Court of Appeals (Third Circuit) by President Bill Clinton in 1999. Barry Trump became an inactive judge in 2016 and retired in 2019, leaving the public eye during her brother’s presidency.

“I knew better even as a child than to even attempt to compete with Donald,” she told New York magazine in 2002. “I wouldn’t have been able to win.He was building models when he was very young. Huge buildings.”

Maryanne went to college at Mount Holyoke and got her master’s at Columbia University in 1962. She married David Desmond, with whom she had a son who would go on to become a psychologist and humorist. Six years after giving birth, Maryanne went to Hofstra University’s law school and began a career in law.

She described her first job out of law school as “one of two women assistant US attorneys in an office of 63 US attorneys, and the first woman to do criminal work appearing only before male judges.”

After divorcing Desmond, Maryanne married John Barry, an attorney who often worked on cases for the Trump Organization, her brother’s company. Barry passed away in 2000.

https://www.rt.com/news/587194-trump-president-sister-dies/

13 Nov, 2023 15:45

Germany promises ‘massive’ increase in Ukraine aid

Berlin will provide “winter protection” for Kiev in the form of air-defense systems and electricity generators

Germany is planning to “expand and increase”its support for Ukraine in the coming years, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at a meeting of the EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. She provided few details of the plans, except for promising Kiev “winter protection” in the months ahead.

Baerbock urged her fellow ministers not to focus solely on the recent hostilities in the Middle East, emphasizing that there remained a need to “face geopolitical challenges” in Europe as well.

“Our support will be massively expanded, especially for the next year,” she told the meeting, warning Moscow not to expect a reduction in EU aid to Kiev as a result of the “dramatic situation worldwide.”

“We will not only continue our support for Ukraine. We will continue to expand and increase it,” she asserted.

Baerbock provided few details about the planned assistance to Ukraine, revealing only thatBerlin is planning to send Kiev another US-made Patriot air-defense system and electricity generatorsas part of the so-called “winter protection umbrella” scheme.

Germany’s Bild tabloid reported over the weekend that the governing coalition inGermany is seeking to increase military aid to Ukraine from €4 billion ($4.27 billion) to €8 billion ($8.54 billion) in 2024 alone. The parliament’s budget committee is expected to review and potentially approve the plan at some point this week, according to the paper.

The data on Ukrainian military aid provided by the German government shows that the total amount of money Berlin will spend on arming and training the Ukrainian troops in 2023 accounted for some €5.4 billion ($5.76 billion), up from just €2 billion ($2.13 billion) in 2022. “Commitment authorizations for the following years [amount] to around €10.5 billion ($11.21 billion),” a government report says, adding that those funds “should primarily be used for military support for Ukraine.”

According to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Berlin has emerged as Ukraine’s second-largest military aid donor. Having spent some $18.2 billion providing military assistance to Kiev, Germany still trails far behind the US, which had spent around $45 billion, the institute’s data showed.

Washington has recently signaled that it may run out of money for Ukraine if Congress does not approve any new relevant spending bills. Last week, the Pentagon said it potentially had only $1 billion remaining for Ukraine military aid, and would have to ration arms packages from now on.

Russia has repeatedly stated that Western arms supplies to Ukraine were hardly affecting the situation on the frontlines. In early November, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that “despite the supply of new kinds of NATO weapons, the Kiev regime is losing.” The Russian military has also regularly published photos and videos of destroyed Ukrainian heavy armor, including German-made Leopard tanks.

(Ukraine has massive dirt on Sholtz and others in Germany leadership imo)

https://www.rt.com/news/587187-germany-massive-increase-ukraine-aid/

13 Nov, 2023 15:45

France to end free weapons supplies to Ukraine

Kiev will have to purchase arms directly from French manufacturers, according to Sebastien Lecornu

France plans to stop sending weapons to Ukraine from its own arsenal andwill instead allow Kiev to buy arms directly from the country’s manufacturers through a support fund, French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu said on Sunday.

“We are now negotiating with our Ukrainian colleagues to prompt Ukraine to buy new howitzers using money from a special fund, andso that the French military will no longer have to transfer guns from their arsenals,” the official said in an interview with LCI broadcaster.

French military aid to Ukraine has reached €3.2 billion ($3.4 billion) thus far, according to a parliamentary report released last week, Lecornu noted. This amount has placed France among the leading European backers of the Ukrainian Army, alongside Germany and the UK.

Paris has also pledged an additional €200 million ($213 million) to Ukraine’s support fund to ensure the Ukrainian Army’s continued access to French military equipment, the official added. Kiev can spend money from the fund on arms purchases, but only from French contractors.

The move reflects France’s new strategy for procuring equipment for the Ukrainian Army, experts say. The French Ministry of Defense’s budget will surge by €3.5 billion next year, a 7.5% increase, reaching $50.4 billion in accordance with the new law on military programming for the years 2024-2030.

Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, France has transferred a large amount of military equipment to Kiev, including 30 Caesar cannons, several dozen armored personnel carriers (VAB), and AMX-10 RC armored reconnaissance vehicles, as well as 15 155mm TRF1 howitzers, around 100 Mistral surface-to-air missiles, and two unitary rocket launchers.

https://www.rt.com/business/587172-france-ukraine-weapons-purchase/