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A mystery is unfolding around a close ally of President Donald Trump who is reportedly headed to the United States after suffering a stunning election defeat in Brazil.Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who unexpectedly lost the presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is traveling to the U.S. after failing to surrender his passports as ordered by Brazil’s Supreme Court, two sources told CNN.CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak described the development as a “strange story,” noting that Bolsonaro’s whereabouts had remained “a mystery” for several days.“He has been under investigation by the Supreme Court,” Liptak reported Tuesday. “The Supreme Court had asked him to turn in his passports by yesterday, so by Monday. He didn't do that.”Bolsonaro, who denies wrongdoing, reportedly feared arrest amid an investigation into alleged corruption, money laundering and currency evasion.Liptak raised questions about whether Trump, who has suggested Brazil’s election may have been rigged, could offer his political ally protection. “The real question now is whether Bolsonaro will be seeking some kind of asylum from the Trump administration,” Liptak said, also questioning whether the White House might have helped facilitate his departure. The reporter pointed to a striking family precedent involving Bolsonaro’s father, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who also traveled to the United States after losing an election to Lula.“Actually, while he was in the U.S., he was a guest at various points at Mar-a-Lago,” Liptak noted Tuesday.The elder Bolsonaro later returned to Brazil, where he was sentenced to 27 years in prison.“What happens next, I think, is a little unclear,” Liptak said.

A recent “political earthquake” just shattered the hopes of those seeking to make a quiet fortune with Donald Trump’s help — and yes, they include the president’s family, political experts contend. The official ouster of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić by a group of politicized students foretells dark times ahead for developers in Trump’s orbit, Professor Vesko Garčević, a former ambassador from Montenegro in the Balkans, told Raw Story. “An autocratic leader is toppled,” Garčević, who wrote a book called Montenegro and Serbia: A Velvet Divorce?, said. “This is a blow for people who wanted to make a profit.”Vučić, the increasingly authoritarian leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, has been fighting for control of his country since 2024, when protests erupted over the deaths of 16 people in a concrete canopy collapse at the Novi Sad railway station.The government’s violent attacks on protesters only fueled the flames of resistance from Serbians who demanded accountability and an end to political corruption. Finally, on Oct. 25, The Student List, a progressive movement of academics and public figures that led the charge, won an electoral victory that saw them claim 141 of the 250 seats in the Serbian parliament. Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party won just 103. It remains unclear who will step forward to lead the party. Potential candidates include Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist; Dejan Šoškić, a former central bank governor; and Radomir Saičić, a Belgrade University chemistry professor. But Garčević, now a Boston University professor of international relations, predicts a positive shift for the people of Serbia, the Balkans, and the European Union. “The political earthquake in Serbia will reshape political dynamics among Serbs across the region,” Garčević wrote in a private social media post shared with Raw Story. “It could weaken hard-core nationalists and might create space for more moderate voices and ideas to gain ground.” In conversation with Raw Story, Garčević initially contended the election results were good news “for everyone,” then adjusted his comment to make an exclusion: Jared Kushner. Without Vučić’s support, the future looks dark for the $500 million hotel Kushner hoped to build on the site of Belgrade’s historic General Staff building, Garčević argued. Recent reporting from The Guardian revealed Vučić himself — as he appeared on podcasts with Donald Trump Jr. and made offerings of suckling pig — pressured his government in February 2024 to break the law for Ivanka’s husband and strip the General Staff building of its landmark protections. Protests erupted once again when details leaked to the public, and abuse of power charges against Serbian officials involved were brought last December. Vučić denied wrongdoing and Kushner’s company announced the project would not proceed “at this time,” according to The Guardian. Garčević said Tuesday the odds are now very slim that the Student List will ever allow Kushner's time to come. “Given what got them to power, an agenda that is very tough on murky projects like that one, it would be against their own interests,” Garčević said. “It is highly unlikely the project will be continued.”But the General Staff building does not represent the Trump family's lone investment in the Balkans by a long shot, Garčević noted.Those investments include plans to pump American fuel in pipelines that once carried Russian energy, the subject of an international scandal that contributed to former Greece Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle — and Trump Jr.’s ex-fiancée — stepping down, as recent Wall Street Journal reporting has revealed. “Using a pretext to diversify energy supply to the region, which by itself is a good [thing], this administration promotes the interests of particular people,” Garčević said. “Those are billion-dollar projects — you can imagine how much one might profit out of it.”They also include Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s plans to build luxury developments on protected grounds in Albania, where protesters in the Flamingo Revolution are now demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama resign. Now, with Vučić’s fall, Balkan power brokers will be left wondering if selling off swaths of territory to Trumps is worth the political price, according to Walter Russell Meade, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal. “Vucic stood out in Europe for his interest in using economic incentives to build ties with the Trump inner circle,” Meade wrote. “Like [Hungary's former Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán last spring, Mr. Vucic, who conceded Sunday, learned that warm relations with Mr. Trump’s White House don’t always impress the voters at home.”Garčević told Raw Story such leaders' gambits fail for a simple reason, and noted that before the Novi Sad railway collapse riots spurred the collapse of Vučić’s government, Serbians had united in protests against lithium mining in Serbia's Jadar Valley.“For them it was their home,” Garčević said. “They didn’t want their home to get spoiled for somebody’s profit.”

A new book on Jared Kushner’s dealings with Middle Eastern leaders alleges that the United Arab Emirates paid Donald Trump’s son-in-law millions for helping oust a secretary of state the Emiratis found troublesome.The New Republic’s Edith Olmsted reported the allegation Tuesday. It comes from author Matthew Cole’s book “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East,” excerpts of which have already drawn fire over claims that Kushner had access to Gulf money while serving in the White House.According to the book, the UAE paid Kushner to help push out then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who, in Olmsted’s words, “had allegedly become extremely cozy with the Qataris.”Tillerson had publicly opposed the Saudi- and Emirati-led blockade of Qatar during his 2017–2018 tenure, and both Gulf nations lobbied for his removal, according to The New Republic. Trump announced his firing on Twitter in March 2018. Cole writes that Kushner had quietly pushed for Tillerson’s exit for months.“In Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, Tillerson’s removal proved once again Kushner’s influence with his father-in-law,” Cole wrote.A source familiar with the arrangement told Cole that Kushner urged Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, known as MBZ, “to speed up their agreed-upon payment,” The New Republic reported. MBZ was then Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and is now the UAE’s president. According to the book, $50 million was routed through Azerbaijan to a Cyprus bank account for Kushner a month later.The book’s financial allegations rely on unnamed sources, and Kushner’s attorney has denied that he sought or accepted money from MBZ or held a Cyprus account. Kushner has called the book’s earlier claims “completely insane, categorically false,” and his lawyers have called an excerpt “defamatory per se.”In a 2018 interview with The New Yorker, Tillerson said he knew who was leaking damaging stories about him. Sources told the magazine he meant Kushner.Cole also writes that Tillerson’s ouster caused a panic in Qatar. In late March or early April 2018, according to the book, Qatari officials quietly told Kushner they would help him secure his struggling property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Trump later appeared to soften his stance on Qatar, though it’s unclear what, if anything, he knew about the deal, The New Republic noted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a top ally of President Donald Trump, is embroiled in an “unprecedented confrontation” with Israel’s top military commander over an undisclosed military operation that officials feared could ignite a clash with Iran just days before elections in which he trails his chief rival, Channel 12’s Yaron Avraham reported.Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir feared the political leadership could steer Israel into a “miscalculation” with Iran on the eve of Tuesday’s elections, according to the report. Zamir refused to act until there was a thorough discussion of the order and the political leadership put its legal authorization in writing. Avraham noted that his report had been cleared by Israel’s military censor.Citing sources familiar with the details, Avraham reported that Zamir stood largely alone. The heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet reportedly backed carrying out the operation before the vote.Recent polls show the party of Netanyahu’s main rival, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, leading Netanyahu’s party.“This guy was seen as a ‘yes man’ for Netanyahu, so for him to pull the fire alarm is really something,” Breaking Points co-host Krystal Ball, a former Democratic congressional candidate, said. “Really quite extraordinary when Netanyahu is getting too wild for his own hand-picked IDF chief of staff.”Netanyahu’s office dismissed the report as “fake news,” and political figures told Channel 12 the military’s concerns were an outright lie. Defense Minister Israel Katz called reports of a rift between political and military leaders “completely baseless and false,” insisting Israel had no intention of attacking Iran before the election but would respond forcefully if Iran struck first.Still, the report has fueled scrutiny. Avigdor Liberman, a former finance and defense minister who now leads the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, asked Israel’s attorney general to open a criminal investigation of Netanyahu for treason, accusing him of “pressuring the heads of the security establishment to take steps that could create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Iran.”

Kim Aris tells the Guardian chance to speak with detained Nobel laureate was ‘public relations’ move from military leadersMyanmar’s former democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be in good physical and mental health but is living in near-complete isolation, her son has said after the first call with his 81-year-old mother in more than five years.“She still sounds certainly all there mentally, and physically she sounds strong,” Kim Aris said. “I don’t think she has anybody outside of the military or the police around her, so essentially she’s been held in solitary confinement from what I gather.” Continue reading...

Elon Musk acknowledged that SpaceX changed how Ukraine's military can use Starlink and followed it with a stark warning about the war.In a lengthy post on X Saturday, the billionaire accused Ukrainian forces of violating Starlink's terms of service by using the satellite internet system "for offensive drone strikes to kill people" before announcing, "That loophole was closed last week."Musk then made clear how much rides on the service. "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately," he wrote. "This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."He argued Starlink "remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now," and credited it with "preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war." "SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR," Musk wrote.Musk drew a distinction between Starlink, which he called "a civilian commercial service," and Starshield, "a different system" that he said is controlled by the U.S. government. "What they decide to do is up to them," he wrote.Then he turned on his critics. "I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict," Musk wrote. "May you burn in hell. End of story."The post, which racked up more than 1.5 million views, came in response to an account insisting Starlink is not a weapons system.Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko pushed back hard on Musk's version of events. "As someone who was inside the process at the Ministry of Defense, I can say with certainty that this is not true," he wrote, noting that "whitelists were introduced" in February.Others piled on. The account for MeidasTouch called it "a deranged post" in which Musk "openly acknowledges that SpaceX recently restricted Ukraine's ability to use Starlink." Shaun Pinner, a British veteran who fought for Ukraine and was held captive by Russian forces, replied simply, "What absolute crap."Singer Marco Foster, an executive producer at Really American who posts political clips on his popular X account, turned Musk's words around by suggesting the "warmongers" jab was "obviously referring to genocidal b— Vladimir Putin."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly invited Cubans to work with the CIA on Friday, and the reaction across the political spectrum was immediate.“To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba - now is the time,” Rubio wrote on X. “The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.”A few hours later, the CIA’s official account posted the same message in Spanish. It included a video ending with the words “Contacte a la CIA” (“Contact the CIA”).Many people were stunned that the message was public at all.“Rubio is just putting this out on main,” wrote Ryan Grim, a reporter at Drop Site News and co-host of “Breaking Points.”Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote that “‘Please help us coup’ is a logical endpoint to Rubio’s worldview.”Some on the left said the post confirmed what they’d long argued about U.S. policy toward Latin America.“Good to see the State Dept lifting the mask of diplomacy and exposing itself as cover for malign CIA destabilization ops aimed at installing puppet governments,” wrote Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone.Journalist Ben Norton, editor of Geopolitical Economy Report, called Rubio a “warmonger” who is “publicly asking Cubans to help the CIA organize a coup attempt.”“The US empire used to organize its many coups in secret,” Norton wrote. “Now it puts job postings for treasonous CIA coup-plotters on Twitter.”Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone predicted that anyone who later blames the CIA for unrest in Cuba will “STILL get called a crazy conspiracy theorist” after the agency said it “right out in the open.”Plenty of Trump allies loved it.“Cuba Libre!” wrote Monica Crowley, a longtime Trump ally and former administration official.“‘Create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA,’” wrote conservative national security commentator David Reaboi. “I want the t-shirt.”Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich responded with a pair of eyes emojis.Jacob Creech, a pro-Trump influencer who posts as “Clandestine,” tied the post to a recent comment from President Donald Trump about Cuba.“Yup, that comment from Trump about Cuba was not an accident,” Creech wrote. “We are going to be cleansing Cuba, which has been a Deep State/CIA hotspot for decades.”The State Department and the CIA didn’t specifically say what kind of “partnership” they were offering.

A gas venture that came up in President Donald Trump's Ukraine peace talks had a hidden backer, according to its former boss.Polar LNG, a startup pitching a plan to export natural gas from Alaska's North Slope, received secret funding from Russian energy giant Novatek, The New York Times reported Friday. Joel Riddle, who ran the company until he resigned in September, told the Times he was misled into believing the money came from a firm in the United Arab Emirates.Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the project last month with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, people familiar with the negotiations told the Times. White House officials see energy deals like it as a way to smooth relations with Moscow."It's not only unlawful, but it's not in the U.S. interest," Riddle told the Times. Novatek, which is under partial U.S. sanctions, was already set to supply the project's technology.Text messages reviewed by the Times show Novatek deputy chairman Denis Solovyov and chief executive Leonid Mikhelson discussed sending as much as $15 million to Polar LNG's Abu Dhabi parent company, Tech Wave, to keep the effort going. "The first 5 million were supposed to arrive by today," Solovyov wrote to Riddle in early September.In a statement to the Times, Novatek said it was moving to become a "minority shareholder" in the project. Polar LNG named Tim Talkington acting chief executive and called Riddle a "disgruntled former employee" who was fired for cause. Documents obtained by the Times show Riddle resigned six days before the company sent him a termination letter.Memos from law firm Baker Botts, attached to Riddle's resignation letter, said Treasury Department sanctions enforcers had flagged "potential Russia-related sanctions concerns." Recent sanctions legislation specifically targets Novatek, but Trump temporarily waived the law's Russia sanctions last week, saying the move was needed to keep peace talks alive.The push to bring Novatek equipment to Alaska also involved Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. who said in February he had negotiated with the Russian company. A spokesman for Trump Jr. said the two are no longer close, and Novatek said Beach played no role in its talks over a Polar LNG stake.There is no indication Witkoff or Kushner knew about Polar LNG's ties to Novatek, the Times reported. Still, Geoffrey Pyatt, a former State Department energy official under President Joe Biden, warned the idea "feeds the belief that Putin can get an out-of-jail-free card."Riddle said he and two other departing executives warned the Trump administration about the Russian financing and urged officials to investigate. The Energy Department did not respond to the Times."I felt like I did the right thing to notify authorities at the appropriate time," Riddle said.