Brazil’s president has blasted the monstrous role of the US dollar in the global economy during a formal visit to China after the two nations forged a recent pact to replace the dollar with their own currencies in trade deals.
"Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade? Who decided the dollar would be the world's currency?" asked President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a Thursday ceremony in China’s largest city and global financial hub, Shanghai, to inaugurate his political ally Dilma Rousseff as president of the New Development Bank set up by the BRICS member nations -- Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa.
"Why can't a bank like the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries? Today, countries have to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies," added visiting Lula, who is currently touring China aiming to further expand ties with his country’s top trading partner.
The 77-year-old president, who is due to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, intends to reposition Brazil as a global go-between and deal broker, spreading a message that "Brazil is back" as a key player on the global stage.
Lula’s administration declared last month that China and Brazil had reached a deal to trade in their own currencies, ditching the US dollar as an intermediary.
Under the currency deal, Brazil and China named two banks – one in each country – to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions by directly exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa, rather than going through the dollar.
China is Brazil's biggest trading partner, with a record $150.5 billion in bilateral trade last year.....more below
US lawmakers in the House Oversight Committee have unveiled new pictures from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, some featuring several of the most well-known figures in the world, including Donald Trump.
The House Oversight Democrats on Friday released 19 new pictures from Epstein’s estate, including pictures showing Trump, former president Bill Clinton, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
“Oversight Dems received 95,000 new photos from Jeffrey Epstein's estate,” the Democrats wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“These disturbing images raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world,” the lawmakers said.
The development came after release of an initial number of images and videos of the island estate.
Epstein, a notorious sex offender, who died in prison, would traffick underage girls to .....more below
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/12/12/760519/Trump-Epstein-Files-Ties
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denounced the United States for using allegations of drug trafficking as a pretext to seize his country’s natural resources, particularly oil.
The Venezuelan chief executive’s Friday remarks came days after US President Donald Trump announced seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump had said, “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening.” “It's going to be starting on land pretty soon,” he had added without elaborating on the specifics of the operation.
In response, Maduro declared, “The mask has fallen,” asserting that the true motive behind US actions is Venezuela’s oil.
“The issue is not drug trafficking. It’s the oil they want to steal,” he said, adding that imperialist powers were after Venezuela’s crude, asphalt... more below
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Islamic Republic inflicted “heavy” and “extensive” damage on Israel during its US-backed aggression of June against Iran.
Speaking on Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in the course of the aggression, Iran dealt a “severe blow” to Israel, which had remained arrogant since the wars in the 1960s, particularly the Six-Day War and subsequent conflicts with Arabs.
“During the war, we inflicted very heavy losses upon the Zionist regime, only a portion of which was made public. Israel itself prevented the full disclosure of the extent of damage caused by Iran’s missile attacks.”
“The reports and images we received from various satellites, together with information obtained from multiple sources in the Israeli-occupied territories, all indicated that the damage sustained [by the regime] was absolutely extensive.”
He said Iranian missiles penetrated through the host of defense systems deployed by several ...
