Category: Russia

The future of critical raw materials: How Ukraine plays a strategic role in global supply chains

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Source

The future of critical raw materials: How Ukraine plays a strategic role in global supply chains

Ukraine is a key potential supplier of rare earth metals, including titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite, and nickel. Despite the war, Ukraine holds the largest titanium reserves in Europe (7% of the world’s reserves). It is one of the few countries that mine titanium ores, crucial for the aerospace, medical, automotive and marine industries.

Before February 2022, Ukraine was a key titanium supplier for the military sector. It also has one of Europe’s largest confirmed lithium reserves (estimated at 500,000 tons), vital for batteries, ceramics, and glass. Ukraine is the world’s 5th largest gallium producer, essential for semiconductors and LEDs, and has been a major producer of neon gas, supplying 90% of the highly purified, semiconductor-grade neon for the US chip industry.

Related:

Ukraine is rebuilding the global titanium market

The Battle for Ukraine’s Titanium

Journalist to American publication: Ukrainian media antagonize the UOC

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A common theme in journalist Flavius Mihăies’s investigation into the religious situation in Ukraine was the role of the media and social networks in fostering antagonism toward the UOC. This is discussed in an article on The American Conservative’s website.

Journalist to American publication: Ukrainian media antagonize the UOC

Related:

The US has a long history of interfering in the Orthodox Church

Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front + The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Some new Ukrainian soldiers refuse to fire at the enemy. Others, according to commanders and fellow fighters, struggle to assemble weapons or to coordinate basic combat movements. A few have even walked away from their posts, abandoning the battlefield altogether.

While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front — a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power.

Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front, commanders say

Related:

Reuters: Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city

But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow’s forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.

Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv’s Aug. 6 incursion.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.

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Moscow’s capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.

WSJ: Ukraine Moves to Encircle Russian Troops in Kursk and Digs In for Long Fight

The incursion hasn’t, so far, shifted the dynamic on the war’s main battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is advancing in toward Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub, and Toretsk, a city on strategically important high ground.

The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine, Officials Say

Capitalism, Transphobia, and Racism to Blame for Controversy around Olympic Boxers + Notes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Capitalism, Transphobia, and Racism to Blame for Controversy around Olympic Boxers

No restrictions exist for people with other genetic advantages, such as a limit on basketball or volleyball players in the 99th percentile for height, or people like Michael Phelps who have double-jointed ankles and unusually long arms. For reference, intersex women (i.e. people assigned female at birth but with abnormal hormone levels or chromosomes other than xx) make up about 1.7 percent of all women, whereas women at least six feet tall make up only 0.5 percent of all women, yet this didn’t prevent the U.S. women’s basketball team from filling up 2/3rds of their roster with women who have this rare genetic advantage.

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The Tokyo Olympics three years later saw the participation of two intersex Namibian runners, Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi. While both had previously found success in the 400m and 800m races, they opted to compete in the 200m to avoid having to artificially reduce testosterone. Mboma won silver in the event, while Masilingi placed sixth. World Athletics responded by tightening its rules again, setting a testosterone threshold of 2.5 nmol/L for all events. Mboma and Masilingi complied with the regulations by taking testosterone blockers, which significantly reduced their running speed, and thus neither qualified for the Paris Games in 2024.

Related:

Testosterone:

Normal measurements for these tests:

  • Male: 300 to 1,000 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) or 10 to 35 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L)
  • Female: 15 to 70 ng/dL or 0.5 to 2.4 nmol/L

LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%

Cis boys get gender-affirming surgeries more often than trans minors

U.S. Investigating Americans Who Worked With Russian State Television

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Twitter

The F.B.I. raided the homes of two prominent commentators on Russian state television channels as part of an effort to blunt attempts to influence November’s election.

U.S. Investigating Americans Who Worked With Russian State Television

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube / Rumble

In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian (archived)