Iran’s IRGC will expand drone operations by 20% and strategic missile operations by 100% in response to US policies, sources told Fars News Agency. | The Iranian Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) will begin increasing its offensive operations starting tonight, informed sources told the Fars News Agency on Sunday. ● According to the sources, in response to the "brutality of Trump and the White House," the IRGC plans to increase its drone operations by 20% and its strategic missile operations by 100%. ● The move, the sources added, is intended to ensure deterrence and a decisive response to any military aggression against Iran’s interests and its people.

Israeli media underlines that Hezbollah wants UNSC Resolution 1791 without any modifications that allow for "Israel" to act freely in Lebanon. | Israeli media reported that Hezbollah is demanding the complete implementation of UN Resolution 1701, without incorporating any clauses related to "Israel's freedom of action," including "the freedom of the Israeli Air Force" within Lebanese airspace, or any Israeli–US oversight concerning villages in southern Lebanon. ● Israeli Channel 12 emphasized that Hezbollah "is not willing to accept anything gradual in this regard. It demands immediate action, a full return to Resolution 1701 without any modifications." ● This stance by the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, prioritizing Lebanon's interests through full implementation of Resolution 1701, aligns with the official Lebanese position.

■ Explainer: What is Security Council resolution 1701? (United Nations)

■ Hezbollah: Sayyed Nasrallah Martyred (Staff, Alahed News)

Russia has dismissed “war crimes” accusations against its president as null and void | The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova may have committed war crimes by “deporting” and “transferring” children from Ukraine. Moscow has dismissed the move as preposterous and not legally binding, since Russia has never ratified the court’s jurisdiction.

■ Absurd ICC 'Warrant' Under US Aegis Proves Russia 'Faces Implacable Enemy It Must Defeat' (Sputnik News)

Dr. Vernon Coleman joined UK Column to provide an analysis of medical corruption and insanity. Backed by years of experience as a doctor, broadcaster, journalist and best-selling author, Dr. Coleman clinically analysed and deconstructed the malevolent health agenda installing itself in the UK and worldwide. ● Discussions highlighted the reality of the pharmaceutical industry being used by our government as a weapon of war on the population. Man or woman, young or old, we are all in their cross-wires and, if we value our lives, Dr. Coleman urges us all to stand and fight.

The United Nations General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions to drop the Russian Federation from membership on the UN Human Rights Council, based on allegations and grisly videos and photos appearing to show execution-style slayings of civilians in Ukraine by Russian troops. [...] Let’s look at some of those [US] crimes:

First and biggest, there is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraq posed no immediate threat to the US. Not even close the way Ukraine shares a 1300-mile border with Russia, Iraq had no navy, no long-range bombers or missiles and is located 7000 miles from the nearest US border. That war, completely illegal, went unpunished, as did the people who ordered it: President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The same is true of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The excuse for that was was that the US wanted to hunt down and capture or destroy the Al Qaeda terrorist organization which was primarily based in Afghanistan, guests of that country’s Taliban government, which claimed not to know that the group and it leader, the Saudi Arabian Osama Bin Laden, were plotting a terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. Because this was not an attack by Afghanistan, and because the Taliban was ready to surrender Bin Laden and his accomplices if offered assurances that they would not be executed — an offer the US refused — there was no justification for that invasion o the 20-year war and occupation that followed it, whose aim shifted from pursuing Al Qaeda to ousting the Taliban from power.

The US invasion of Libya and the overthrow and murder of its leader Muammar Qaddafy in 2011 was similarly a war crime, as, like the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq before it, was never sanctioned by any UN Security Council Vote, and because Libya posed no threat to the US, imminent or otherwise, as required under international law. President Obama, who ordered that war, is also as much a war criminal as is President Putin.

The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy. Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. (Source)

Tim Ball ■ Green Journalism; Mainstream Media Creating Climate Stories

ANTARCTIC sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres. ● The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a significant margin’’.

Steve Kates ■ A Chilling Appraisal Of Climate Change (Book review) || The book reminds me just how viciously stupid have been the left’s attempts to gag debate on global warming. Had the only evidence available supported the warmists’ cause, there might have been something worth continuing to discuss. Instead, with the abrupt end to the warming phase between fifteen and twenty years ago [...], we should actually be looking at the effects that may follow if a solar minimum is about to recur, as it did during the Little Ice Age which ended not all that long ago. Suppose the Thames were to begin freezing over again, as it last did in 1802, how will we get on in a world of such cold and reduced growing seasons? Try that out in conversation the next time some propaganda-programmed dimwit brings up climate change. ■ Global warming is climate change for idiots. A cooling climate may be the real thing and the possibility should be treated with the utmost seriousness. The subtitle, “Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish and Short", is exactly what the book explains. It’s a book with a message we should all be thinking about, and not just here in Australia but across the world.

Photographer David Tipling charts the life of a King Penguin colony. He charts one pair of adults' journey to rear their young chick. The images were captured in Right Whale Bay, South Georgia. ● One glance at these heart-warming pictures and it is clear why penguins make the perfect parents. Mothers and fathers are seen struggling to raise their offspring in the midst of harsh blizzards and freezing conditions. This colony of King Penguins were captured huddling together during a storm in Right Whale Bay, South Georgia island. ● In his new book Penguins: Close Encounters, photographer David Tipling documents a penguin parent's struggle against adversity to raise their chick. The collection of 130 photographs showcases the birds in their natural habitat. Photos of each of the world's 17 types of penguins are included in the book. The couple are pictured creating a heart shape, craning their heads over their offspring. Meanwhile another shot captures a group of young penguins huddling together to protect themselves from the icy winds. And a tiny baby seeks shelter on its parent's feet while another image shows a line of adults making the arduous march back to the sea for food. To capture the series of images Mr Tipling said he trekked to some of the most remote and beautiful locations in the world. Renowned wildlife photographer, Mr Tipling, who has worked freelance since 1992, said: 'My latest book is a visual celebration of a group of birds that have given me more pleasure to observe and photograph than any other.' (Photo: David Tiplimg/NPL/REX)

An aerial view of the Amazon river. (F. Lanting/Corbis)

Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon.

Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out we have only known half the story until now.

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider. Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km. The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon flows much faster than the Hamza, however, draining a greater volume of water. Around 133,000m3 of water flow through the Amazon per second at speeds of up to 5 metres per second. The underground river's flow rate has been estimated at around 3,900m3 per second and it barely inches along at less than a millimetre per hour.

Paul Nicklen describes his most amazing experience as a National Geographic photographer - coming face-to-face with one of the Arctic's most vicious dangerous predators.

A central tenet of “climate change” dogma holds that increased emissions (2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now) leads to greater CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But a new study from the University of Bristol could shake up traditional assumptions. The study suggests that CO2 levels have remained constant since 1850. New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

It is one of the rarest giants of the ocean, and it has been caught on film for the first time. An underwater camera crew filming for the BBC recorded a smalleye stingray swimming off the coast of Mozambique. The smalleye stingray is the largest of all 70 species of stingray, attaining widths of more than 2m. The elusive creature, first discovered in 1908, has only ever been seen alive off the coast of Tofo in southern Mozambique.

Footage of the fish will be broadcast on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 11 November, as part of the programme Andrea: Queen of the Mantas for the BBC documentary series Natural World.