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What do you expect your likelihood of drinking caffeine to be in a year from now?

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…5 days5D

Netanyahu Shifts Focus to Iran After Cease-Fire with Hezbollah

Israel approved a cease-fire with Lebanon that is intended to bring a halt to more than a year of fighting with the Hezbollah militia and could help defuse a broader regional crisis that has threatened to ensnare the U.S. and other world powers.“I have some good news to report from the Middle East,” President Biden said on Tuesday, announcing a cease-fire that he said would begin at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the agreement earlier in the day, saying it would let Israel focus on the threat from Iran, allow the Israeli military to rest and rearm, and isolate Hamas.“The continuation of the cease-fire will be dependent on what happens in Lebanon. We will enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to every violation,” Netanyahu said.Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, welcomed the agreement, saying it would bring “calm and stability in Lebanon and the return of the displaced to their homes and cities.”The Lebanese cabinet is expected to meet on Wednesday to approve steps to enforce the cease-fire, including sending government security forces to areas of southern Lebanon near the border with Israel.Hezbollah has indicated openness to a deal in recent days. “What concerns us are Lebanese national measures and the protection of sovereignty,” Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Parliament affiliated with the group, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.The announcements came after a day of heavy bombardment of Beirut while Israeli ground forces advanced deeper into Lebanese territory. Minutes after Biden spoke, a series of explosions thundered in Beirut. Northern Israel also came under renewed rocket fire.There was no immediate public comment from Hezbollah on the announced cease-fire.If implemented, the agreement would be a diplomatic success for Biden in the twilight of his administration, after more than a year in which the White House has tried to fend off the possibility of a wider regional war. It could also change the landscape that President-elect Donald Trump will face when he takes office in January.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…5 days5D

Mexico Slams U.S. Policies as Trump Renews Border War

President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% import duties on Mexican goods if the country doesn’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants across the border.Sheinbaum said she was willing to engage in talks on the issues, but said drugs were a U.S. problem.“One tariff would be followed by another in response, and so on until we put at risk common businesses,” Sheinbaum said, referring to U.S. automakers that have plants on both sides of the border.She said Tuesday that Mexico had done a lot to stem the flow of migrants, noting “caravans of migrants no longer reach the border.” However, Mexico’s efforts to fight drugs like the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl — which is manufactured by Mexican cartels using chemicals imported from China — have weakened in the last year.Sheinbaum said Mexico suffered from an influx of weapons smuggled in from the United States, and said the flow of drugs “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society.”Sheinbaum also criticized U.S. spending on weapons, saying the money should instead be spent regionally to address the problem of migration. “If a percentage of what the United States spends on war were dedicated to peace and development, that would address the underlying causes of migration,” she said.Sheinbaum’s bristly response suggests that Trump faces a much different Mexican president than he did in his first term.Back in late 2018, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a charismatic, old-school politician who developed a chummy relationship with Trump. The two were eventually able to strike a bargain in which Mexico helped keep migrants away from the border — and received other countries’ deported migrants — and Trump backed down on the threats.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1wk1W

Israeli Rabbi Killed in UAE: A New Front in the Shadow War?

An Israeli-Moldovan man who had been missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found dead, announced Israeli authorities on Sunday, branding his killing “an abhorrent act of antisemitic terrorism”.Emirati intelligence and security services located the body of Zvi Kogan, an emissary for the Jewish Chabad religious group, three days after he vanished after leaving the store where he worked.Neither Israel or the UAE gave any details about the circumstances in which Kogan was killed. The Israeli prime minister’s office said Israel would “use all means and will deal with the criminals responsible for his death to the fullest extent of the law”.It also told Israeli citizens to take extra precautions in the UAE, and reiterated a warning against all but essential travel to the country. The Gulf state, which is the region’s trade, tourism and finance hub, was the first of three Arab countries that normalised relations with Israel in a landmark deal in 2020, known as the Abraham Accords.After the deal, the UAE welcomed Israeli tourists and business people, particularly technology entrepreneurs as it sought to build economic ties, with a focus on tapping Israeli technology.The small, autocratic state, which has a highly sophisticated security apparatus, was considered one of the safest countries in the region for Israelis to travel to.The UAE did not immediately comment on Kogan’s killing. In a statement on Saturday after Israel announced that Kogan had gone missing, the UAE’s foreign ministry said Emirati authorities were taking “extensive measures” to find him, referring to Kogan only as Moldovan.The killing comes at a turbulent time in the Middle East, which is in the grip of a spiralling conflict that began with Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel. It has since escalated across the region, with Israeli forces launching a ground invasion of Lebanon, exchanging missile salvos with Iran, and trading fire with Iranian proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.The UAE has remained committed to the Abraham Accords, while joining other Arab states in condemning the devastation caused by Israel’s more than year-long assault against Hamas in Gaza.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…6 days6D

Missiles for Moscow: North Korea's Secret Factory Fuels Russia's War Machine

North Korea is expanding a key weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine, researchers at a U.S.-based think tank have concluded, based on satellite images.The facility, known as the February 11 plant, is part of the Ryongsong Machine Complex in Hamhung, North Korea's second-largest city, on the country's east coast.Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), located at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said the plant was the only one known to produce the Hwasong-11 class of solid-fuel ballistic missiles.Ukrainian officials say these munitions - known as the KN-23 in the West - have been used by Russian forces in their assault on Ukraine.The expansion of the complex has not been previously reported.Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied that North Korea has transferred weapons for Russia to use against Ukraine, which it invaded in February 2022. Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty at a summit in June and have pledged to boost their military ties.North Korea's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment for this story.The satellite images, taken in early October by the commercial satellite firm Planet Labs, show what appears to be an additional assembly building under construction as well as a new housing facility, likely intended for workers, according to the analysis by researchers at CNS.It also appears that Pyongyang is improving the entrances for some of the underground facilities at the complex.A disused bridge crane that was in front of a tunnel entrance, blocking easy access, was removed, suggesting they might be placing an emphasis on that part of the facility, Lair said."We see this as a suggestion that they're massively increasing, or they're trying to significantly increase, the throughput of this factory," Lair said.The new assembly building is about 60 to 70 percent the size of the previous building used to assemble missiles.

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