Author: Dave Schultz

Russia may respond to any U.S. confiscation of its currency reserves frozen in the West by seizing the assets, including property and cash, of U.S. citizens and investors in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Saturday. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the Biden administration to confiscate Russian assets held in American banks and transfer them to Ukraine, something the Kremlin has said would be illegal and trigger retaliation. In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia’s central bank and finance ministry and blocked about…

As tensions from the Israel-Hamas war continue to ripple through Canada, and officials across the country report an alarming rise in anti-Muslim occurrences, some experts say Islamophobia must become a classroom priority addressed now, in practical ways and on multiple fronts. Although there have long been calls for more attention on combating Islamophobia in Canadian schools, it’s been an infrequent topic of discussion, with just a handful of Ontario school boards beginning work in recent years on developing an anti-Islamophobia strategy. Canada is “in a moment where we acknowledge that equity and inclusion is important,” but it’s imperative to move beyond talk into action, said Aasiyah…

After highlighting strong tailwinds for logistics properties in its FY23 results last month, Centuria Capital Group (ASX: CNI) has secured a new $500 million institutional investment mandate on behalf of an unnamed, significant US private investment firm. The Last Mile Logistics Partnership (LMLP) mandate will focus on acquiring assets within supply-constrained infill industrial markets across Australia, and has been seeded with a $76 million three-asset portfolio which was settled on Friday within key urban Melbourne industrial precincts. The move comes within four months of Australian property investment manager Centennial securing $700 million from Canada’s Brookfield to close a last mile…

Kenes Rakishev, star investor, international entrepreneur, philanthropist and former special envoy of the Kazakhstan government, meets star chef, Gordon Ramsay and star manufacturer, Borealis Foods to change the international food market. When Kenes Rakishev embarked on the establishment of Oxus SPAC, a specialized entity aimed at acquiring and subsequently taking companies public on the American stock market, experts were filled with anticipation and conjecture regarding his targeted investments. Renowned for his diverse interests spanning robotics, battery technologies, communications, and groundbreaking concepts, Kenes Rakishev’s decision left everyone startled, as he delved into an exceedingly unforeseen realm: the food sector. Kenes Rakishev…

The Barbie film has hit the billion-dollar mark just 17 days after it was released, according to distributor Warner Bros. The movie will finish the weekend with $1.03bn (£808m) in ticket sales at the global box office, it said in a statement on Sunday. It means Greta Gerwig has become the first woman to reach the milestone as a solo director. Warner Bros described it as a “watershed moment”. Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution in the US, said: “No-one but Greta Gerwig could have brought this cross-generational icon and her world to life in such a funny, emotional and entertaining…

Legislative hardliners want the Idaho Commission for Libraries and the state’s school and public libraries to sever ties with the American Library Association. The Idaho Freedom Caucus push stems from a since-deleted tweet from Emily Drabinski, a Boise High School graduate elected ALA president in April 2022. At the time, Drabinski described herself as a “Marxist lesbian.” “Her election raises issues about libraries’ involvement in exposing children to explicit materials and injecting hard-left politics and sexuality into publicly funded libraries,” the caucus of 13 lawmakers said in a statement Monday. “The ALA has provided LGBT resources and pressured libraries to…

This week, smoggy air from the Canadian wildfires has returned to the United States. Although there are about 900 wildfires burning across Canada, this week’s smoke will come from the west of the country. Several regions, including the Midwest, the Great Lakes, central Tennessee, North Carolina, and the Northeast, received air quality alerts. Several cities were reporting high values of the Air Quality Index by 5 a.m. Eastern time on Monday: 158 in Buffalo, 155 in Chicago, and 142 in Nashville. The air pollution index ranges from 0 to 500; the higher the number, the more air pollution there is.…

IRNA quoted Seyed Mehdi Hosseini Matin, Charge d’Affaires in the Iranian Embassy in London, in an interview with USA Today, in which the diplomat expressed cautious optimism that a possible agreement could be reached soon. Matin also said that any alleged agreement requires an objective text to be discussed and signed. The diplomat stated that negotiations between Iran and the United States are being mediated by Oman indirectly. He added that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are playing their role in facilitating the talks. As a responsible country, Iran has always announced its willingness to sign a stable and…

BEJUCAL, Cuba, June 14 (Reuters) – Just outside the sleepy Cuban village of Bejucal, a winding track, rutted with potholes and losing ground to the jungle, ends at a barbed wire fence. A sign warns: “KEEP OUT, MILITARY ZONE.” What lies beyond remains largely a mystery, though the U.S. government has long suspected that China runs an intelligence gathering operation in this village that once hid Soviet nuclear warheads. A Reuters reporter traveled to Bejucal this week, gaining rare access to the area around the site that remains an enigma, even for locals, but that has come under scrutiny after…

Democracy is under threat around the world. One of the most elaborate multidimensional measures of democracy, the V-Dem Institute in Sweden, notes that today, 72 percent of the world’s population lives in autocracies and only 13 percent in liberal democracies, with 42 countries autocratising – moving farther away from democracy – in the past year. Yet, such an approach takes a snapshot of current characteristics, fails to acknowledge the different ways in which regimes became undemocratic, and generates unrealistic attempts to nudge regimes towards democracy. Some regimes do not respond because they are platypus. In biology, phenetic classification presumes that we can look at…