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A fishing community in Brazil's southeastern Ilha Grande bay once saw the blacktip sharks navigating the sparkling, emerald green water as potential food.

Escaped flowerhorn cichlids are causing concern for native species and about parasites capable of infecting humansEscaped ornamental aquarium fish have integrated into a local ecosystem in the Philippines, but scientists say they may be threatening the native biodiversity of the lake.Flowerhorn cichlids – human-bred hybrid fish prized for their bright-gold colour and prominent head humps – are believed to have escaped from breeding facilities into Lake Sampaloc, which sits in a volcanic crater, during a typhoon. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's public address may have severely damaged the nation's delicate relationship with China and threatened a crucial summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this fall, NBC News reported Friday.Trump on Thursday night leveled explosive allegations that China had illicitly obtained 220 million American voter files—including names, addresses, phone numbers, and political party preferences, the report noted. NBC reported that Trump branded it "the largest compromise of election data in history," but offered no credible evidence to support the claim.His statements were undercut by a 2021 memo from the current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, MS NOW reported on Friday morning.The allegations immediately backfired. China's foreign ministry swiftly rejected the accusations as fabricated, with spokesperson Lin Jian dismissing Trump's claims as a "malicious smear" designed to undermine bilateral relations."China has consistently adhered to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries," Lin stated at a Beijing briefing Friday. "China has no interest in, and has never interfered in, U.S. elections."The timing couldn't be worse, NBC News reported, as both nations attempt to maintain a fragile trade ceasefire while navigating deep geopolitical tensions. Trump's public accusations—which contradict findings from his own CIA Director John Ratcliffe, based on a 2021 memo—now threaten to unravel months of diplomatic groundwork, the report stated.While Trump stopped short of explicit threats toward Beijing or Xi personally, experts warn the damage to relations is substantial. The accusations inject fresh hostility into an already fraught dynamic."Beneath the veneer of Washington and Beijing trying to get along, there continues to be friction," Ja Ian Chong, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore told NBC. "This could add to that."

MS NOW’s David Rohde argued Friday morning that CIA Director JohnRatcliffe needs to explain why he let President Donald Trump make false claims that contradict his own investigation.Rohde appeared on "Morning Joe" to discuss the top CIA official's presence in the room on Thursday night when the president accused China of tampering with US elections.He then held up a government memo from Ratcliffe authored that stated otherwise.“This speech to me just shows how desperate, delusional and dangerous this administration, this president is becoming,” he began. "Just on Ratcliffe, I think he owes an explanation to the American people.” Holding up the memo, he continued, “This is a public document. This is his dissent that he put out in January 2021 after the election. And the main point he made was that he believed that the amount, the effort to shape, not to interfere, not to change votes — there is no mention in this document from John Ratcliffe that China tried to or changed any votes in the 2020 election. John Ratcliffe simply made the argument that the Chinese effort to influence the operation through propaganda and bots online was larger than the broader assessment that Representative Jim Himes was just talking about.”“And that dissent is actually in this document: It's actually public,” he continued. “And so if there's anyone who should be held to account now, whether it's by President Trump or if he testifies before Congress, it's John Ratcliffe, he either lied, allowed this giant plot to happen where all this was hidden from the president. He is a member of the deep state, or he did not, and which one is it? Director Ratcliffe, were you part of a deep state plot that hid from the president?” - YouTube youtu.be

Critics say Foreign Office figures send ‘global message about the role the country wants to play on international stage’Labour’s foreign aid cuts mean reductions of as much as 90% in the bilateral support the UK will give to some African countries, Foreign Office figures show.The department’s annual report includes a long-awaited breakdown of how the reduction in the aid budget will affect individual countries for the next three years. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency dealings earned him a massive amounts of wealth — effectively rigging the whole industry in his favor as if it's one of his old casinos, conservative analyst and talk radio host Erick Erickson warned on Thursday.This comes after financial reports revealed Trump and his family have made over $1.4 billion from crypto assets alone under the new presidency, their single largest gain of assets."In gambling, they say never bet against the house," he wrote. "In crypto, President Trump has positioned himself as the house."Erickson, a committed conservative Republican who nonetheless criticizes the president on occasion, pointed out Trump has made more of a profit on cryptocurrency "than every single publicly traded U.S. cryptocurrency company," which all combined finished out the year half a billion down.The real problem, wrote Erickson, is so much of this money is flowing in from foreign sources."An Abu Dhabi state-backed fund chaired by the UAE’s national security adviser used $2 billion of World Liberty’s stablecoin to finance a deal — weeks before the White House cleared the UAE to buy advanced American AI chips," wrote Erickson. This is by no means the only foreign racket currently in progress, he said. "Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, manages more than $6 billion — 99% of it foreign, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund — while Kushner serves as a peace envoy dealing with those very governments," wrote Erickson. All of this only scratches the surface of the problem, Erickson said.If the GOP "meant what they said" in 2016 when they vowed to "drain the swamp," wrote Erickson, "the test is simple, and it applies to their own side: no foreign money flowing to the president’s family while the government it deals with awaits a decision; no regulators dropping cases against companies the first family owns; no one betting on state secrets; real divestment, not divestment to one’s children.""Drain the swamp. Don’t just recycle the water for our side," he concluded.

Country begins 42-day countdown to outbreak being declared officially over, as numbers continue to rise in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the CongoUganda has started lobbying countries to lift Ebola-related travel restrictions after discharging its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital.The discharge of a Congolese national from the Mulago national referral hospital’s isolation centre in Kampala on Thursday triggered the start of a 42-day countdown required by the World Health Organization before Uganda can officially be declared Ebola-free, provided no new infections are detected. Continue reading...

Vessels believed to have departed from Myanmar in late June, with mostly Muslim Rohingya minority onboardThe United Nations has said more than 500 people are feared dead after reports of two large shipwrecks off Myanmar since late June.The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) and its refugee agency UNHCR voiced alarm in a joint statement at reports “that two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days”. Continue reading...