Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said on Sunday afternoon that his country will be withdrawing from communist China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio’s trip comes as President Donald Trump has signaled that he is willing to use military power to retake control of the Panama Canal if the country does not regain complete control over the operations of the canal from China.
“One important thing, which is a decision I made and communicated to him, is that the 2017 memorandum of understanding on the Silk Road, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, will not be renewed by my government,” Mulino said. “That is a fact.”
Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
USAID staffers said they tracked 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails in the agency system saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”
The developments come after Musk, who is leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with the Republican president’s agreement, said early Monday he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
“It became apparent that its not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.” “We’re shutting it down.”
Musk’s comments online came after the administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Staff at a Lyndonville, Vermont, motel alerted authorities about seeing the duo with a firearm and black tactical clothing.
Authorities now say the guns used by Youngblut and Bauckholt are owned by a person of interest in other murders — and connected to a mysterious cult of transgender “geniuses” who follow a trans leader named Jack LaSota, also known by the alias “Ziz.”
Bauckholt was a biological male who identified as trans and used feminine pronouns. He was an award-winning youth math genius from Freiburg, Germany, who later graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Around 2021, he was hired as a quantitative trader at Tower Research Capital in New York. It is believed Baukholt was in the US on an H-1B visa. The Department of Justice says he was armed in the car and tried to aim his firearm before being shot dead.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.
Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States. The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions. This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Panama officials that Chinese influence over the Panama Canal must be curbed or the U.S. will take retaliatory actions, the State Department said Sunday.
Rubio said that it is also a violation of the treaty between the U.S. and Panama which defines the neutrality and operation of the canal.
“Secretary Rubio made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the Treaty,” Bruce said.
The CEO of Canada’s second-largest publicly traded company says Canadians want their government to do all the things that President Trump is demanding — and slammed outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not preventing the trade war.
Trump, 78, on Saturday, signed an executive order to slap 25% across-the-board tariffs on America’s northern neighbor, citing its failure to meet his demands on helping crack the fentanyl and illegal immigration trade.
“Canada thrives when it works with America together. Win by helping America win. Trump believes that Canada has not held its side of the bargain,” Tobi Lutke, who co-founded Shopify, wrote on X.
“These are things that every Canadian wants its government to do, too. These are not crazy demands, even if they came from an unpopular source. These tariffs are going to be devastating to so many people’s lives and small businesses.”
Just because corruption and malfeasance exists at every level, does not mean it can’t be cleaned out. Trump is well on his way to cleaning it out. I will continue to support Trump’s moves even if I sometimes do not have all the facts. As a large population of caring Americans, we need to roughly agree on major subjects and not get lost in the weeds. Trump does not have much time to effect what may amount to a peaceful 2nd American Revolution. If he succeeds, he will very beneficially affect Europe and other Western countries. He will also have a huge impact of the rest of the world. ABN
American Buddhist Net 