Author: admin

Authored by Charles Davis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

On a gray morning in Geneva, a human-rights advocate walks into the Palais des Nations and scans the room the way you’d scan a street corner for gang members in a hard neighborhood. Not for gangbangers, though; for “civil society.” For the suited delegates with NGO badges who film speakers a little too closely, who echo embassy talking points a little too faithfully, who make the room feel—subtly, persistently—less safe for anyone bringing evidence that embarrasses Beijing. Investigators have documented this pattern: government-linked “NGOs” using U.N. access to disrupt, intimidate, and drown out criticism.

Cancel culture is alive and well in the groups and committees of the U.N. and that scene matters because it sits beneath the most consequential line in the White House’s new withdrawal memorandum: the United States will “take immediate steps” to exit a list of international organizations and U.N.-linked bodies “as soon as possible.”

The memo is anchored to an earlier directive—Executive Order 14199—which required a review of U.S. participation and support across international bodies.

The list itself is telling. It includes scientific and governance nodes like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and also the machinery that sets development narratives and convenes states—the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs and multiple U.N. Economic and Social Council regional commissions.

Critics will frame this as isolationism. Supporters will call it sovereignty. But there is another lens worth an objective look: narrative influence by adversaries—especially China—nested inside institutions that were built for cooperation, not contest.

Winning by Wearing Out

Chinese strategists continue to laud a whole-of-capabilities approach called “dissipative warfare”—a strategy of exhausting an opponent through protraction, friction, and cumulative cost rather than a single decisive blow.

You don’t need to treat that concept as doctrine to see how it can map onto global institutions. If the fight is to shape what the world believes is “responsible,” “lawful,” “sustainable,” or “legitimate,” then bodies that write standards, bless language, convene negotiations, and credential “civil society” become key influence targets. The point isn’t open control of an organization. It’s to slow, dilute, redirect, and stigmatize—until your competitor either accommodates the narrative or exits the field.

Procedural Choke Points

Start with climate and science. The IPCC’s Summaries for Policymakers are, by design, negotiated line-by-line with governments. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s written into the IPCC’s own procedures.

That model can produce robust consensus—but it also creates leverage for states skilled at procedural delay and linguistic bargaining. In a dissipation frame, the goal is not to “win” the report; it’s to grind down clarity, introduce ambiguity, and turn scientific bottom lines into endlessly contestable phrasing. In this condition, the narrative is malleable.

Similarly, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change outcomes often hinge on consensus among nearly 200 parties. The Glasgow Climate Pact’s language calling for a “phase-down” of unabated coal power illustrates how hard-fought wording becomes the battlefield itself.

The Development Narrative Machine

Then there is the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs—on the memo’s withdrawal list—because the department doesn’t merely “do development.” It frames the development story: what counts as progress, which financing models are celebrated, what language becomes standard in global planning.

Leadership and institutional emphasis matter here. The U.N. secretary-general appointed Li Junhua of China as undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs in 2022.

U.N. development publications have treated China’s Belt and Road initiative as compatible with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development goals. That’s not proof of control. It is, however, a form of normalization—turning a contested geopolitical initiative into familiar U.N. development vocabulary. It’s a form of socializing it into acceptability.

In a dissipation strategy, this is where you make the long game feel inevitable. You bind contested geopolitics to the moral vocabulary of “sustainable development,” and you force rivals to fight uphill—arguing not only against a project, but against the institutionally blessed framing around it.

The ‘Civil Society’ Channel

Finally: access. The U.N. system grants NGOs consultative privileges on the assumption they act independently of governments. But reporting and watchdog analysis describe a growing ecosystem of state-linked “government-organized” NGOs using that access to crowd out testimony, praise Beijing, and intimidate critics—especially in Geneva’s human-rights ecosystem.

This is dissipation in human form: make participation costly, make speaking risky, and make the room feel owned—until fewer credible witnesses show up.

Why the Memo’s List ‘Hangs Together’

Read the White House memo as a map of where narrative influence is manufactured and laundered into global “common sense.” It targets bodies that, one, negotiate language under consensus rules; two, set development and climate frames that travel into national policy; and three, credential actors who then shape discourse as “independent stakeholders.”

That does not mean every named institution is adversary-controlled. It does mean adversaries—especially China, and in some domains Russia and Iran—can apply pressure through procedure, staffing, agenda framing, and access manipulation. In that sense, withdrawal is an attempt to stop paying to stand in a room where the rules can be used to exhaust you. No one wants to sit in the dunking booth when there’s a professional pitcher holding a bucket of balls.

But here’s the hard truth: if the United States exits without a replacement strategy, the vacuum becomes its own kind of dissipation—self-inflicted. Even Reuters’ early reporting on the memo notes the scale of the pullback and the risk that others fill the gap.

If the premise is adversarial narrative warfare, then the measure of success isn’t simply to “leave.” It’s whether Washington can deny manipulation and keep shaping outcomes—by rebuilding coalitions, hardening rules for NGO access, investing in standards bodies it stays in, and treating language battles as strategic terrain rather than diplomatic housekeeping.

The memo pulls America off one battlefield, but it doesn’t end the war over perception. It simply raises a hard question: why should the United States keep paying to staff, fund, and legitimize systems whose outputs so often harden into narratives that cut against U.S. strategy? You don’t have to believe in “capture” to see misalignment. The real test now is whether Washington replaces withdrawal with an influence strategy—one that protects openness, rewards transparency, and stops underwriting language that is later used to pressure American policy and partners.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A single asteroid strike can reshape a planet, and Earth’s history is marked by several cataclysmic impacts.

This map by Julie Peasley for Visual Capitalist uses data from the Earth Impact Database to showcase the 12 largest confirmed impact craters on Earth, ranging from massive basin-forming events to relatively recent collisions.

The World’s Largest Craters by Diameter

The following table ranks the top 12 confirmed impact craters based on their estimated rim-to-rim diameter:

While Vredefort in South Africa ranks first at 99 miles (160 km), it formed over 2 billion years ago and has been significantly eroded. In contrast, the second-ranked Chicxulub crater in Mexico retains a clearer structure and is famous for its role in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out most dinosaurs.

Extinction Events and Impact Size

Interestingly, larger crater size doesn’t always mean greater devastation. As scientists have noted, factors like impact velocity, angle, and composition can be just as important. The Chicxulub impactor likely released over 100 million megatons of TNT-equivalent energy, triggering firestorms, tsunamis, and a global winter.

In contrast, older impacts like Morokweng or Sudbury were equally massive but occurred long before complex life had evolved, so they did not cause any known mass extinction events.

Lasting Geological Signatures

Some craters, such as Sudbury in Ontario, have left behind unique geological formations and mineral deposits. The Sudbury Basin remains one of the most economically important mining regions in the world, rich in nickel and copper.

Others, like the Morokweng crater in South Africa, have even preserved fragments of the original meteorite thousands of meters beneath the surface.

Why So Few Ancient Craters Remain

Despite Earth’s long history, many early craters have vanished due to erosion and tectonic activity. Earth’s oldest impact scars are gradually being lost to time—unlike the Moon or Mars, which preserve theirs far better. This is why craters like Vredefort or Beaverhead are so valuable: they offer rare glimpses into planetary-scale violence from billions of years ago.

Curious about the cosmos? Explore Every Moon in the Solar System and dive deeper into the celestial bodies orbiting our planets.

 

Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Most of us have experienced this: You stayed up a bit too late the night before, and although your body turned up to work, your mind was elsewhere.

Blanking out during the day is common for the sleep-deprived, and now researchers have found out why it happens.

When people experience attention lapses after poor sleep, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid flows out of the brain.

During sleep, cerebrospinal fluid—part of the brain’s cleaning system—flushes away waste products, but sleep deprivation forces this process to activate during waking hours.

“If you don’t sleep, the [cerebrospinal fluid] CSF waves start to intrude into wakefulness where normally you wouldn’t see them,” senior study author Laura Lewis, an associate professor at MIT, said in a press statement. “They come with an attentional tradeoff, where attention fails during the moments that you have this wave of fluid flow.”

The Body Signals Before the Brain Crashes

The study, published in October 2025 in Nature Neuroscience, included 26 volunteers.

The volunteers were tested twice—once after a night of sleep deprivation and once when well rested.

During the tests, participants wore EEG caps that measured their brain activity while inside an MRI scanner, which measured the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. They were then asked to complete attention tasks.

In the first test, they listened to a brief tone and pressed a button as quickly as possible when they heard it. In the second test, participants looked at a screen showing a cross at all times. When the cross changed into a square, they pressed a button as quickly as possible.

Both tests measured how fast the person responded to different signals—one auditory and one visual.

Unsurprisingly, participants performed worse when they were sleep-deprived, with slower response times and missed stimuli.

When sleep-deprived people blanked out, researchers observed cerebrospinal fluid flowing out of the brain, followed by its return as attention recovered. Pupil constriction occurred about 12 seconds before cerebrospinal fluid flowed out, with dilation happening after the attention lapse.

“What’s interesting is it seems like this isn’t just a phenomenon in the brain, it’s also a body-wide event. It suggests that there’s a tight coordination of these systems,” Lewis noted.

The researchers suggest a single circuit may govern both attention and bodily functions such as fluid flow, heart rate, and arousal. One likely candidate is the noradrenergic system, which helps regulate thinking and body functions through the neurotransmitter norepinephrine and naturally rises and falls during sleep.

Why the Brain’s Cleaning System Matters

During deep, non-REM sleep, cerebrospinal fluid flows through the brain in rhythmic waves, clearing out waste products like beta-amyloid and tau proteins—the same ones that accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease.

“When you’re sleep-deprived, this cleaning system doesn’t work as well,” Leah Kaylor, author of “If Sleep Were A Drug” and a clinical psychologist not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times. “In simple terms, when you cut corners on sleep, you cut corners on brain maintenance.”

The consequences can extend beyond momentary attention lapses. Chronic disruption of the glymphatic system has been called “the final common pathway” to dementia, Dr. Hamid Djalilian, a professor of otolaryngology, neurosurgery, and biomedical engineering at the University of California, who was not involved with the study, told The Epoch Times.

“When there is inadequate clearance of waste proteins in the brain, they start to form the very plaques and tangles that are the hallmarks of dementia,” he added.

However, dentist and sleep expert Dr. Stephen Carstensen noted that occasional sleep deprivation shouldn’t result in permanent damage. “[The] human brain is capable of a great deal of response without serious permanent change, this allows us to function even while sleepy,” Carstensen told The Epoch Times. However, if sleep deprivation becomes chronic, this poor response could become “the new ‘normal,’” for that person’s brain.

Consistency Is Key to Good Sleep

You don’t need perfect sleep every night, but consistency is key, Kaylor said. She recommends aiming for seven to nine hours of sleep most nights, and keeping a regular bedtime and wake time—even on weekends.

She advises limiting screen time, caffeine, and alcohol before bed, since they can interfere with deep sleep.

“Create a cool, dark, quiet sleep space—and keep work, phones, and TVs out of the bedroom,” Kaylor said.

However, if sleep problems last more than a few weeks, or you feel exhausted despite enough hours in bed, she recommends seeing a sleep specialist. “Treating insomnia, sleep apnea, or circadian rhythm issues can make a major difference in long-term health,” Kaylor emphasized.

She added that sleep is not wasted time—it’s when the brain cleans itself, resets its chemistry, and helps the body repair and recover. “Protecting sleep is one of the most powerful things you can do to preserve mental sharpness, emotional stability, and long-term brain health.”

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Please consider supporting ZeroHedge with the purchase of IQ Sleep Formula, which actually works! 

Birth rates in the U.S. have been declining for decades, but that decline has hit some states faster than others.

The projections in this visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, are from SmartAsset, who analyzed results from U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 1-Year American Community Survey.

The number shown for each state represents births per 1,000 people, and is based on most recent fertility rate data and state demographics.

Utah’s Demographic Advantage

Utah ranks first in the nation, with an estimated 9.7 babies born per 1,000 people each year.

The state’s relatively young population plays a major role, as younger adults are more likely to be in childbearing years. Cultural and religious influences also contribute, with larger family sizes remaining more common than in many other states.

Large States, Strong Numbers

Texas and California rank near the top both in absolute and relative terms. California is projected to see more than 340,000 births per year, while Texas exceeds 278,000. On a per-capita basis, both states are driven by younger populations and higher shares of immigrants.

Where Birth Rates Lag

States in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest tend to rank lower. Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia sit near the bottom, with fewer than eight babies born per 1,000 people annually. Older populations, higher living costs, and delayed family formation all play a role.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Countries With the Biggest Gains in Life Expectancy on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The Florida legislature has begun to move legislation (HB 999) to enact their prior approval for gold and silver coins to be legal tender in Florida.

This legislation will exempt gold and silver coins from sales tax in Florida. It also means that within Florida, there will be a means of payment independent of digital money created by governments for the purpose of controlling the population, it’s behavior, and it’s expressed views, in order that governments can rule via official narratives.

It is possible that if circumstances develop the tyrants in Washington will establish martial law in Florida and dispense with the use of real money in place of digital money that has no physical existence.

Unless all states adopt the legalization of gold and silver as legal tender, Floridians would be unable to make out of state payments and would have to become an economy unto itself, producing all of its own needs. This is the safest and most preferable way to exist.

Throughout history, gold and silver have been the means of payments. The Roman legions were paid in silver coins, the denarius.  Estates were  purchased for gold.

Paper money appeared originally as a receipt on gold holdings.  If their gold was a large amount, people kept their gold in the vaults of goldsmiths and wrote notes to the goldsmiths to release the payment amount of the transaction to their business associates in order to pay their bills.

Goldsmiths learned that few ever claimed physical possession of their gold, instead using written notes, in effect checks, to transfer ownership. Thus goldsmiths became the first bankers, knowing that they could lend out the gold in their vaults that few ever came for. Moreover neither did those who borrowed the gold take possession physically. They merely wrote to the Goldsmith that they had made a payment that transferred ownership. Thus some percentage of their holding was transferred to the third-party.

This was the origin of fractional reserve banking.

When I was born gold was no longer a legal means of payment in the United States. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal hero,  had confiscated all the goal in the hands of the American population.

Once he had it, he raised the price from $20 an ounce to $35 an ounce. Later, it was raised to $42 an ounce and stood there until Senator Jesse Helms in the 1970s got  legislation passed permitting Americans to again own gold coins, but gold was not made an official means of payment.

Following World War II, the Breton Woods agreement gave the US dollar the world reserve currency role. This meant that US debt in the form of Treasury bonds became the reserves of the world’s central banks. Thus, the US government was able to pay its bills by issuing debt as US Treasury debt was the reserves of the world’s central banks. Initially under the Brenton Woods system foreign central banks could redeem their holdings of US treasuries for gold. However, by demanding gold in exchange for France’s holdings of US debt, President Charles de Gaulle prompted the closing of the “gold window” in the 1970s, and US debt could no longer be exchanged for gold.

When I was born, silver was a means of payment. There were one dollar, two dollar, and five dollar Treasury Certificates, not federal reserve notes, that were exchangeable for silver at the price of one dollar per ounce of silver.

In my youth silver was used for transactions less than a dollar.The 10 cent piece known as the dime was silver. The 25 cent piece, or quarter dollar, was silver. So was the 50 cent piece. The penny was copper.

US one dollar bills, whether silver certificates or not, could be exchanged for a silver dollar at a bank, but silver dollars were not used in transactions. They existed to remind us that in the 19th century cowboys were paid 30 silver dollars per month and could survive on it.

For many years as my articles have documented, the US dollar has been able to maintain its value because gold and silver short-selling was able to hold down the rise in the dollar price of  gold and silver.

Unlike equities, it is possible to short the precious metals market without holding collateral against the short. The futures market for gold and silver permits the printing of paper gold and silver in the form of futures contracts that are dumped  in the futures market where the contracts drive down the prices of the precious metals. The peculiarity of the precious metals market is that the price of gold and silver has not been determined in the physical market where it is bought and sold, but in the futures market where it can be shorted by printing claims to gold and silver.

Recently in response to  uncertainty of the value of increasing amounts of paper dollars not backed by anything, the demand for real money in the form of precious metals has overwhelmed the ability to use short-selling to hold down the prices of gold and silver.

As gold and silver prices rose, speculators joined the rise.

Speculators simply see opportunities, and when they had accumulated sufficient gain, they cashed out of the rise, resulting in a sharp fall in gold and silver prices.

However, the underlying situation that raised the dollar prices of real money has not changed, and therefore once speculative profits are removed from gold and silver prices the rise in the value of precious metals will resume.

One possible reason for President Trump’s desire for Venezuela’s oil and other assets, Greenland, and assets in Ukraine is to prop up the dollar with real things.  

As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, the power of the United States rests on the dollar’s role as world reserve currency as this permits the US to pay its bills by issuing debt. China understands the value of having the role 0f being the reserve currency and has announced that it wants this role for the Chinese currency. As China is less indebted, more industrialized, and has a higher gross domestic product than the United States, it is possible that the continuation of the rapid growth of US national debt will result in the US losing the reserve currency role to China.

For several decades, the United States has had a destructive policy of offshoring its manufacturing, thereby weakening its own economy while the US government ran up massive amounts of debt. With the dollar already questionable Washington further undermined the dollar by weaponizing it, thus making it risky for central banks to hold US dollars in the form of Treasury debt as reserves. The seizure of Russian central bank reserves in the amount of $300 billion demonstrated the risk.

With no end of American wars and spending sprees in sight, the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency could well be in jeopardy.

Once this role is lost the dollar’s value in terms of other currencies will fall, and as the United States has become an import-dependent economy, US inflation would explode, further driving down the dollar.

Policy makers should take notice of this threat.

It is a more serious threat to America than is Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, or Russia in Ukraine and the Arctic.

It is far more important for the United States to protect the value of its currency than for the United States to spend another trillion dollars, clearing Israel’s opponents from the Middle East.

Fierce winter weather across the eastern half of the U.S. put the power grid, data centers, and electricity prices back in focus, especially in the Mid-Atlantic, where Washington, D.C., logged its longest freezing streak since 1989.

Our review of Facebook, X, media coverage, and local officials’ comments suggests that the cold snap across the Mid-Atlantic has put data centers and power bills in the spotlight, especially given that PJM Interconnection is already operating in a very tight grid environment.

Even as residents in Mid-Atlantic states increasingly push back against data centers while watching their monthly power bills soar, local officials, some of whom are partly responsible for tightening grid spare capacity with backfiring “green” policies, are scrambling as public anger grows.

However, Goldman analysts led by Hongcen Wei have some disappointing news for residents in the Mid-Atlantic, and frankly elsewhere, who are trying to slow data center development: “U.S. Local Regulatory Pushbacks Against Data Centers Are Not Slowing Development.”

Wei, Daan Struyven, and Samantha Dart explained:

Media coverage highlights growing local community pushbacks against data center developments, posing a slow-down risk to data center power demand growth, along with US power market tightness. While local regulatory reviews could pause data center approvals temporarily, we believe resulting regulations could lead to fewer pushbacks and streamlined development processes by enhancing power reliability and affordability and establishing clear requirements. Ultimately, we believe power tightness remains the primary risk that could slow the US in the AI race with China.

We note that these pushbacks mostly originated from local communities with little exposure to data centers. In such cases, we expect proposed data centers to relocate rather than be canceled in the extreme scenario of a ban, given elevated demand for data centers and AI. This suggests no significant impact on overall future data center power demand growth at the state or national level.

• We take Georgia as an example, where we estimate the power market is not tightening and power price increases were below the national average in 2025. There was wave of moratoriums enacted by at least six counties in the past year, putting a pause on new data centers for at least a few months (for example, in Coweta and DeKalb counties). However, most of these counties have no existing data centers, only proposed projects to start in a few years, so we do not expect these moratoriums to impact data center developments in the near future. Going forward, with no clustering advantage within these counties (to stay close to another data center with established data highways), we believe even permanent bans would only result in project relocation to a more welcoming area (potentially the neighboring county) rather than cancellations

In other communities with both regulatory actions and existing data centers, regulatory reviews are often followed by continued and even accelerated growth. Rather than creating red tape, we believe updated regulations could streamline development processes by clearly defining specific requirements for data centers which are easier to follow than addressing diverse local community concerns.

• Douglas County, the only one of the six Georgian counties with existing data centers (a top-10% county in the US), activated multiple new data centers in 2H2025 and more are scheduled for later following its 90-day moratorium on data centers starting from March 2025 (Exhibit 1).

• Nationally, Loudoun County, Virginia, the world’s capital of data centers, started reviewing and updating its data center regulations in 2024 and approved them in 2025, with further regulations under consideration. However, the county continues to lead in data center capacity, with additions in the past year surpassing any other US county and its own previous records

Beyond local ordinances, we also see state-level legislation increasingly focusing on power affordability and reliability, which we do not expect to slow down data center developments. Specifically, we expect more regulations in the next few years aiming to shift more power costs from the public to data centers to incentivize additional power supply and to mitigate power bill increases. These regulations could take various formats, such as the President and several governors’ plan for the PJM (Mid-Atlantic) power market, or reductions in data center tax exemption (as seen in bills introduced in Arizona and Maryland). Nevertheless, we expect higher power costs to have limited impact on future data center power demand growth, as power costs are not a primary driver for data center expansion

Conversely, we believe state-level regulations that enhance power affordability and reliability could lead to a more favorable environment for accelerated data center developments, as Texas has started to demonstrate (Exhibit 2).

• In June 2025, Texas passed its Senate Bill 6 (SB6) to regulate large electricity consumers, including data centers and cryptocurrency miners. The bill could be a bellwether for other states, with its new requirements for large-load customers to ensure power reliability, including backup generation and potential curtailments during emergencies. We do not expect these requirements to be a dealbreaker for new data centers, given our estimate that the Texas (mainly ERCOT) power market will be softer than other key regional power markets, resulting in a lower probability of curtailments, a key factor for data centers when choosing their location, while backup generation is always a standard component of data centers. In fact, Texas/ERCOT ranked second only to Virginia/PJM in data center capacity and additions across US states/power markets in 2025 (Exhibit 3). Going forward, we continue to consider Texas as one of the most competitive states for new data centers, with both high power availability and low time to client.

Professional subscribers can learn more about the data centers and power grids on our new Marketdesk.ai portal​​​​.

Via The Cradle

At least 31 people were killed and 169 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber struck a Shia mosque on the outskirts of Islamabad during Friday prayers, Pakistani officials said, in one of the capital’s deadliest attacks in over a decade.

The blast happened in the Khadija al-Kubra Imambargah mosque in the outskirts of Islamabad, with police saying the attacker had been stopped at the mosque gate before opening fire and setting off explosives among worshipers, according to officials cited by Reuters.

Footage and images from the site showed bodies and debris scattered across the mosque’s carpeted prayer hall, with the wounded lying in the compound gardens, as bystanders called for help and rushed victims to hospitals.

Islamabad deputy commissioner Irfan Memon said the death toll stood at 31, adding that 169 injured people had been brought in for treatment, some in critical condition.

No group claimed responsibility yet; however, conflict monitor ACLED said the attack “bears the hallmarks of the Islamic State,“ while officials noted that Shia communities, a minority in Pakistan, have repeatedly been targeted in sectarian violence by extremist groups, including the Islamic State and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the bombing as “a crime against humanity,” ordering full medical assistance to be provided for the wounded. 

Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said a thorough investigation is underway and that “those who are responsible must be identified and punished.”

The attack unfolded as Islamabad was already under heightened security for a visiting foreign leader, with checkpoints and armed patrols deployed across the capital. 

While bombings are rare in the capital city, officials say militant violence has surged across the country in recent months.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif accused India of sponsoring the attack without presenting evidence, a claim New Delhi did not immediately respond to and has repeatedly denied in the past.

The deadly mosque attack comes after Pakistani security forces launched large-scale operations in Balochistan – a vast, sparsely populated region in southwestern Pakistan – following a wave of coordinated gun and bomb attacks over the weekend that killed about 50 people.

A suicide blast in Shia mosque has killed more than 31 people in Islamabad, Pakistan. Jinnah made a country for Muslims but Muslims kill more Muslims than any other religion in Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/YQcVaY8bgs

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) February 6, 2026

Islamabad announced the killing of at least 145 separatist militants from the Balochistan Liberation Army, according to provincial officials. Authorities said the assaults targeted multiple districts, including Quetta and Gwadar, and included suicide bombings and gunfire at security installations.  

Pakistan’s provincial leadership accused Afghanistan and India of backing the militants – claims that New Delhi has denied – as Islamabad imposed sweeping security restrictions across the province amid a broader surge in militant violence.