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The post Russians strike two communities in Dnipropetrovsk region with heavy artillery appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

Ukrainian forces are repelling constant Russian attacks on Bakhmut and other towns in the eastern region of Donbas, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday, after denying Kremlin claims of 600 soldiers killed in a missile strike.

Russia launched seven missile strikes, 31 air strikes and 73 attacks from salvo rocket launchers in the past day, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a daily report.

Ukrainian forces repelled attacks on 14 settlements, including Bakhmut, it added.

“Bakhmut is holding on despite everything,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in nightly video remarks on Sunday.

“And even though most of the town has been destroyed by Russian strikes, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance.”

The nearby town of Soledar was holding on, “even though there is even greater destruction and things are very difficult”, he added.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the battlefield reports.

Zelenskiy made a fresh denunciation of what he called Russia’s failure to observe a truce it had proclaimed for Orthodox Christmas by staging attacks on Ukrainian cities.

“Russians were shelling Kherson with incendiary ammunition immediately after Christmas,” he said, referring to the southern city abandoned by Russian forces in November.

“Strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Donbas – on civilian targets and at the very time when Moscow was reporting a supposed ‘silence’ for its army.”

On Sunday, Russia said a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut, had killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers, but a Reuters reporter at the scene found no obvious signs of casualties.

A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and which it had targeted as revenge for a New Year’s attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers and caused outcry in Russia.

But neither dormitory in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There were no obvious signs that soldiers had been living there and no sign of bodies or traces of blood.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesperson for the eastern region, described the claim of mass casualties as an attempt by the Russian defence ministry to show it had responded forcefully to Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian soldiers.

“This is an information operation of the Russian defense ministry,” Cherevatyi told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne News.

As Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine grinds towards the one-year mark, Russia’s military is under domestic pressure to deliver battlefield successes.

Hawkish voices have sought an escalation of the war effort after setbacks such as loss of captured territory and high rates of death and injury.

Some prominent Russian military bloggers have criticised the Russian defence ministry claims.

“Let’s talk about ‘fraud’,” wrote one prominent pro-war military blogger on the Telegram messaging app, who posts under the name of Military Informant and who has more than half a million subscribers.

“It is not clear to us who, and for what reason, decided that 600 Ukrainian soldiers died inside, all at once, if the building was not actually hit (even the light remained on).

“Instead of the real destruction of the enemy personnel, which would have been a worthy response, an exclusively media operation of retaliation was invented.”

The militaries of both Russia and Ukraine militaries have often overstated enemy losses, while minimising their own.

Ukraine’s top military officials said last week some 760 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in two attacks on Moscow-controlled parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. These reports could not be independently verified.

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The morale of Russian troops proceeds to deteriorate. In unique, the Russian armed service from the 127th Different Reconnaissance Brigade, deployed in the briefly occupied metropolis of Sevastopol, are looking at the ending of the war on any phrases.

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The post Belarus receives long-term storage military equipment from Russia appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

Brazil’s Supreme Court late on Sunday removed the governor of Brasilia from office for 90 days due to flaws in security in the capital, after thousands of backers of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro ransacked government buildings.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes also ordered social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to block coup-mongering propaganda.

Brazilian authorities have begun investigating the worst attack on the country’s institutions since democracy was restored four decades ago, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowing to bring those responsible for the riot to justice.

Tens of thousands of anti-democratic demonstrators on Sunday invaded the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential palace and smashed windows, overturned furniture, destroyed art works and stole the country’s original 1988 Constitution. Guns were also seized from a presidential security office. read more

Leftist president Lula, who took office on Jan. 1, said the local militarized police force that reports to Brasilia Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a former Bolsonaro ally, did nothing to stop the advance of the protesters.

Lula decreed federal intervention of public security in the capital and promised exemplary punishment for the leaders of the “fascist” assault that was aimed at provoking a military coup that could restore Bolsonaro to power.

“All the people who did this will be found and punished,” Lula told reporters from Sao Paulo State.

The assault raised questions among Lula’s allies about how public security forces in the capital were so unprepared and easily overwhelmed by rioters who had announced their plans days ahead on social media.

Lula blamed Bolsonaro for inflaming his supporters after a campaign of baseless allegations about election fraud after the end of his rule marked by divisive nationalist populism.

From Florida, where he flew 48 hours before his term ended, Bolsonaro rejected the accusation, tweeting that peaceful demonstrations were democratic but the invasion of government buildings “crossed the line.”

The invasion, which recalled the assault on the U.S. Capitol two years ago by backers of former President Donald Trump, was quickly condemned by world leaders, from U.S. President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron to Latin American heads of state.

Police retook the damaged public buildings in the iconic futuristic capital after three hours and dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino said 200 demonstrators had been arrested, but governor Rocha put the number at 400.

Dino said investigations will aim to uncover who financed the several hundred buses that brought Bolsonaro’s supporters to Brasilia and also probe Rocha for not preparing security.

The occupation of the government buildings had been planned for at least two weeks by Bolsonaro’s supporters in groups on social media messaging platforms such as Telegram and Twitter, yet there was no move by security forces to prevent the attack, called by one group “the seizure of power by the people.”

Messages seen by Reuters throughout the week showed members of such groups organizing meeting points in several cities around the country, from where chartered buses would leave for Brasilia, with the intention to occupy public buildings.

The plan included camping in front of the army command’s headquarters, where groups of coup-mongers had camped out since Lula narrowly won the election in October.

In the early afternoon of Sunday, when the protesters began to arrive on Brasilia’s esplanade, instead of being contained, they were escorted by Military Police cars with flashing lights.

Riot police only arrived on the scene two hours after the invasions began.

Bolsonaro faces legal risks from several investigations before the Supreme Court in Brazil and his future in the United States, where he traveled on a visa issued only to sitting presidents, is in question.

“Bolsonaro should not be in Florida,” Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro said on CNN. “The United States should not be a refuge for this authoritarian who has inspired domestic terrorism in Brazil. He should be sent back to Brazil.”

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Screenshot of Apple Books app notifying readers that the audiobook they selected features an AI-generated narrator called “Madison.”

Insider

• Apple quietly launched dozens of audiobooks narrated by AI-generated digital voices.
• The voices, “Jackson” and “Madison” narrate dozens of audiobook titles on the Books app.
• Critics say the voices lack nuances that humans have and aren’t “what customers want to listen to.”

Apple quietly launched dozens of new audiobook titles featuring AI-generated digital voices called “Jackson” and “Madison,” replacing human storytellers in a move critics say misses the point of what customers look for in listening to a story instead of reading one themselves.

According to a statement released by Apple, the digital voices are “natural sounding” and “based on a human narrator.” But some of the phrases in the books used awkward pronunciations and had an emotionless affect that Ars Electronica said in a review was not a replacement for the passionate performances by human readers in some audiobook recordings. 

“Companies see the audiobooks market and that there’s money to be made,” Carly Watters, a Canadian literary agent, told The Guardian. “They want to make content. But that’s all it is. It’s not what customers want to listen to. There’s so much value in the narration and the storytelling, “

The swap to digitally-created voices has critics concerned that the innovation, while potentially cutting costs for the company and allowing for faster content creation, takes cost-saving too far, at the expense of the listener experience.

“The narrator brings a whole new range of art in creating audiobook, and we believe that’s a powerful thing. They’re creating something that is different from the print book, but that adds value as an art form,” David Caron, a co-producer at Canada’s largest audiobook publisher, told The Guardian. “When you have really great writing and really talented narration, you’re coming up with something special. That’s worth investing in.”

Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Asian shares rallied on Monday as hopes for less aggressive U.S. rate hikes and the opening of China’s borders bolstered the outlook for the global economy.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) rose 2.0% to a five-month top, with South Korean shares (.KS11) gaining 2.2%.

Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) added 0.7%, while Hong Kong shares (.HSI) climbed 1.4%. China’s yuan also firmed to its highest since mid-August under 6.8000.

Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) was closed for a holiday but futures were trading at 26,215, compared with a cash close on Friday of 25,973.

S&P 500 futures added 0.2% and Nasdaq futures 0.3%. EUROSTOXX 50 futures gained 0.6%, while FTSE futures firmed 0.3%.

Earnings season kicks off this week with the major U.S. banks, with the Street fearing no year-on-year growth at all in overall earnings.

“Excluding Energy, S&P 500 EPS (earnings per share) is expected to fall 5%, driven by 134 bp of margin compression,” wrote analysts at Goldman Sachs. “Entering reporting season, earnings revision sentiment is negative relative to history.

“We expect further downward revisions to consensus 2023 EPS forecasts,” they added. “China reopening is one upside risk to 2023 EPS, but margin pressures, taxes, and recession present greater downside risks.”

A sign of the strain came from reports Goldman would start cutting thousands of jobs across the firm from Wednesday, as it prepares for a tough economic environment. read more

In Asia, Beijing has now opened borders that had been all but shut since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing a surge in traffic across the nation. read more

Bank of America analyst Winnie Wu expects China’s economy, the second-largest economy in the world, to benefit from a cyclical upturn in 2023 and anticipates market upside from both multiple expansion and 10% EPS growth.

Sentiment on Wall Street got a boost last week from a benign blend of solid U.S. payroll gains and slower wage growth, combined with a sharp fall in service-sector activity. The market scaled back bets on rate hikes for the Federal Reserve.

Fed fund futures now imply around a 25% chance of a half-point hike in February, down from around 50% a month ago.

That will make investors ultra sensitive to anything Fed Chair Jerome Powell might say at a central bank conference in Stockholm on Tuesday.

It also heightens the importance of U.S. consumer price index (CPI) data on Thursday, which is forecast to show annual inflation slowing to a 15-month low of 6.5% and the core rate dipping to 5.7%.

“We at NatWest have lower than consensus CPI forecasts, and if right that will likely solidify the market pricing of 25bps vs 50bps,” said NatWest Markets analyst John Briggs.

“In context, it should still be seen as a Fed that is still likely to hike a few more times and then hold rates high until inflation’s decline is guaranteed – to us that means a 5-5.25% funds rate.”

Friday’s mixed data had already seen U.S. 10-year yields drop a steep 15 basis points to 3.57%, while dragging the U.S. dollar down across the board.

Early Monday, the euro was holding firm at $1.0673 , having bounced from a low of $1.0482 on Friday. The dollar eased to 131.48 yen , away from last week’s top of 134.78, while its index was flat at 103.600 .

The Brazilian real had yet to trade after hundreds of supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro were arrested after invading the country’s Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court. read more

The drop in the dollar and yields was a boon for gold, lifting it to an eight-month peak around $1,877 an ounce .

Oil prices were steadier, after sliding around 8% last week amid demand concerns.

Brent bounced 80 cents to $79.37 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 78 cents to $74.55 per barrel.

China braced for a “new phase” in its battle against COVID-19 on Monday and financial markets strengthened after Beijing dropped pandemic border controls in the latest easing of curbs that has let the virus loose on its 1.4 billion population.

Sunday’s reopening is one of the last steps in China’s dismantling of its “zero-COVID” regime, which began last month after historic protests against curbs that kept the virus at bay for three years but caused widespread mental agony and severe damage to the world’s second-largest economy.

While Beijing’s move to drop quarantine is expected also to boost outbound travel, several nations are demanding negative tests from visitors from China, seeking to contain an outbreak that is overwhelming many of China’s hospitals and crematoriums.

“Life is moving forward again!,” the official newspaper of the Communist Party, the People’s Daily, wrote in an editorial praising the government’s virus policies late on Sunday which it said had moved from “preventing infection” to “preventing severe disease”.

“Today, the virus is weak, we are stronger.”

China’s state Xinhua news agency said the country had entered a “new phase” of its COVID response, citing its virus prevention experience, the development of the epidemic and increased vaccination levels.

China’s top health officials and state media have repeatedly said COVID infections are peaking across the country and they are playing down the threat now posed by the disease.

That is in stark contrast to the earlier regime of strict quarantines and lockdowns as China managed the virus as a “Category A” disease like the bubonic plague and cholera. China’s management of COVID was technically downgraded to “Category B” on Sunday, although many curbs have been dropped for weeks.

Officially, China has reported just 5,272 COVID-related deaths as of Jan.8, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.

But the World Health Organization has said China is under-reporting the scale of the outbreak and international health experts estimate more than one million people in the country could die from the disease this year.

Shrugging off those gloomy forecasts, investors are betting that China’s reopening will help revive the $17 trillion economy and bolster the outlook for global growth.

Those hopes lifted Asian shares to a five-month high on Monday while China’s yuan firmed to its strongest level against the dollar since mid-August. Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) added 0.4%, while Hong Kong shares (.HSI) climbed 1.4%.

“It’s a huge relief just to be able to go back to normal … just come back to China, get off the plane, get myself a taxi and just go home,” Michael Harrold, 61, a copy editor in Beijing told Reuters at Beijing Capital International Airport on Sunday after he arrived on a flight from Warsaw.

Harrold said he had been anticipating having to quarantine and do several rounds of testing on his return when he left for Europe for a Christmas break in early December.

State broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday that direct flights from South Korea to China were close to sold out. The report quickly shot to the most read item on Chinese social media site Weibo.

However, a spike in demand from South Koreans, who make up the largest number of foreign residents in China, as well as others, will be hampered by the limited number of flights to and from China, which are currently at a small fraction of pre-COVID levels.

Korean Air said earlier this month that it was halting a plan to increase flights to China due to Seoul’s cautious stance towards Chinese travellers. South Korea like many other countries now requires travellers from China, Macau and Hong Kong to provide negative COVID test results before departure.

Flight Master data showed that on Sunday, China had a total of 245 international flights, combining inbound and outbound, compared with 2,546 flights on the same day in 2019, representing a fall of 91%.

China’s domestic tourism revenue in 2023 is expected to recover to 70-75% of pre-COVID levels, but the number of inbound and outbound trips is forecast to recover to only 30-40% of pre-COVID levels this year, China News reported on Sunday.

($1 = 6.7955 Chinese yuan renminbi)

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hands President Joe Biden a letter that outlined laws that the governor said would make a great difference, if enforced, in addressing the “chaos” at the border, as Biden arrives at El Paso International Airport in El Paso Texas, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023.

Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

• President Joe Biden met with Texas gov. Greg Abbott during a visit to the US-Mexico border Sunday.
• Abbott renewed his calls for the federal government to send funds to Texas to address the border.
• Since April, Texas has spent millions of dollars busing migrants to places like DC and Chicago.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday during President Joe Biden’s visit to the border that the state “desperately needs more money” to address the issue.

After meeting with Biden, Abbott took questions from reporters in which one asked if he planned to ask the federal government to send Texas additional funds to help address the historic surge in illegal immigration.

“One hundred percent. Texas desperately needs more money,” Abbott said. “I know the Republicans in the US House have committed to providing Texas the money that we need. We just finished over the past two years spending 4 billion of Texas taxpayer dollars for Texas to fill the gap caused by the Biden administration.”

—Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2023

 

Abbott has previously called on the federal government to reimburse the state for its border efforts and said additional resources, including the National Guard. From October 2020 to October 2021, Border Patrol encountered 1.7 million migrants attempting to cross the US-Mexico border illegally, the highest number in more than 7o years.

In April, Abbott began chartering busses to drop migrants off in other parts of the country, like Washington, DC, and Chicago, without giving those cities any notice — a program that Texas has spent millions of dollars on.

Texas had spent $12 million on the efforts as of August, the Texas Tribune reported at the time. By November, the amount spent busing migrants out of state had risen to $20 million, according to local outlet WFAA.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Left: Rep. Matt Gaetz. Right: Rep. Nancy Mace.

Left: Drew Angerer/Getty Images. Right: Allison Joyce/Getty Images.

• Rep. Kevin McCarthy became House Speaker Saturday morning after conceding to far-right lawmakers.
• On CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Rep. Nancy Mace condemned Rep. Matt Gaetz for capitalizing on the vote.
• She also slammed the “backroom” deals McCarthy made to get the seat.

Rep. Nancy Mace took aim at the controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz following a tumultuous week in the House that highlights new divisions within the GOP. 

“Matt Gaetz is a fraud. Every time he voted against Kevin McCarthy last week he sent out a fundraising email,” Mace, a Republican representing South Carolina, told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face The Nation” Sunday. “What you saw last week was a constitutional process diminished by those kinds of political actions.”

In one message to supporters, Gaetz accused now-Speaker McCarthy of “standing in the way of a true MAGA majority” before asking for donations, FOX News reported.

In a similar fundraising stunt, an email to supporters read: “McCarthy and his allies have pulled every trick in the book to silence me and give the Swamp’s biggest alligator his coronation as Speaker of the House.” 

Gaetz, who was on the receiving end of Rep. Mike Rogers’s emotionally-charged lunge during the 14th voting session for House Speaker, was one of 20 of his far-right colleagues who withheld their votes from McCarthy during a seemingly endless negotiation process. 

On the 15th round, Gaetz was one of six lawmakers to change their votes to “present,” which essentially allowed for McCarthy’s win without the full 218 votes in favor of him as speaker.

“I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for,” Gaetz told CNN after the 15th vote. McCarthy won the speakership, but it’s still unclear how much power he conceded to his ultra-conservative Republican counterparts.

“We don’t know what they got or didn’t get,” Mace told Brennan, condemning the “backroom” deals. “We haven’t seen it. We don’t have any idea what promises were made or what gentleman’s handshakes were made.”

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

She added: “And it does give me quite a bit of heartburn because that’s not what we ran on. It is quite ironic.”

Mace has represented the 1st District of South Carolina since 2021. Though she used to work for his campaign, Mace criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Still, she’d voted against impeaching the former president, arguing that the process was “rushed.” 

All eyes were on Mace during the third and fourth days of the Speaker vote when she brought her dog, Libby to the chamber, saying “there are no rules right now,” The Independent reported. 

—Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) January 5, 2023

 

House lawmakers are set to vote on a rules package, which would set the stage for how the House will operate, on Monday. Mace told Brennan that she is unsure whether or not she will support the rules package.

“I like the rules package. It is the most, open, fair, and fiscally conservative package we have had in 30 years. I support it,” Mace added. “But what I don’t support is a small number of people trying to get a deal done or deals done for themselves in private, in secret to get a vote or a vote present. I don’t support that.”

Representatives for Mace, Gaetz, and McCarthy did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.