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WH to send 500 additional National Guard members to D.C.

admin - Latest News - November 26, 2025
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WH to send 500 additional National Guard members to D.C.



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Sept. 29, 2025, 1:52 PM EDTBy Angela YangA comedy festival in the capital of Saudi Arabia has become a cultural flash point as major comedians face criticism for accepting seemingly lucrative deals to perform in a country that was virtually impossible to visit until 2019 and a pariah in much of the West for its human rights record.The Riyadh Comedy Festival, which began Friday and runs through Oct. 9, features a variety of big names such as Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Pete Davidson, Andrew Schulz, Jo Koy, Bill Burr, Jessica Kirson, Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K.These comedians, most of them American, are now encountering resistance from some fans, human rights advocates and fellow comics in the industry.Marc Maron, host of the “WTF” podcast, blasted the festival in a recent stand-up clip, joking that it was easy for him to “take the high road on this one” considering he was not invited to perform.“I mean, how do you even promote that?” Maron said. “Like, ‘From the folks that brought you 9/11, two weeks of laughter in the desert. Don’t miss it.’ I mean, the same guy that’s gonna pay them is the same guy that paid that guy to bone-saw Jamal Khashoggi and put him in a f—ing suitcase.”The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment. Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, which announced the festival in July, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“The festival is the largest of its kind globally, bringing together a selection of award-winning comedy stars known for their outstanding performances on international stages and streaming platforms,” the Saudi Press Agency wrote in its announcement for the General Entertainment Authority. “It reflects the efforts to amplify Riyadh’s status as a leading destination for major cultural and artistic events.”Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich home of Islam’s two holiest sites, was for years among the most socially conservative nations on Earth with a morality police enforcing a strict interpretation of Shariah. In recent years under the rule of de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country expanded its cultural and political influence by diversifying its economy and investing in sports, entertainment and tourism to improve its global image. Along with this, the crown prince oversaw a sweeping crackdown on dissent — imprisoning disgruntled royals, women’s rights advocates, and reforming clerics as well as adherents to previously government-sanctioned proponents of strict Wahhabi Islam.Celebrities and influencers have often been criticized for performing in the country or participating in tourism campaigns, and FIFA drew condemnation last year for selecting Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 World Cup.Shane Gillis, who said he was offered an invite, claimed that the organizers “doubled the bag,” or the amount of money offered, after he declined to participate.“It was a significant bag, but I’d already said no,” Gillis said on his podcast. “I took a principled stand.”On TikTok and Instagram, verified accounts that appeared to belong to Turki Al-Sheikh, a royal court adviser who has emerged as a powerful figure in sports and entertainment as part of Saudi Arabia’s push into the global culture industry, posted videos of Chappelle and Hart.In a news release last week, Human Rights Watch wrote that the Saudi government is using the festival “to deflect attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations” and called on the performers “to publicly urge Saudi authorities to free unjustly detained Saudi dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists.”The nonprofit watchdog organization noted that some of the events land on the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by intelligence operatives with close ties to the crown prince. The festival also takes place just months after Saudi authorities executed Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family.“The seventh anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder is no laughing matter,” Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “And comedians receiving hefty sums from Saudi authorities shouldn’t be silent on prohibited topics in Saudi like human rights or free speech.”Other listed performers for the festival include: Sebastian Maniscalco, Maz Jobrani, Tom Segura, Whitney Cummings, Jimeoin, Russell Peters, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Chris Distefano, Mark Normand, Gabriel Iglesias, Hannibal Buress, Sam Morril, Jeff Ross, Omid Djalili, Ali Siddiq, Zarna Garg, Chris Tucker and Ben Hart.These performers did not respond to requests for comment.The Saudi government has been censured by dozens of countries, and in 2024 it was denied a second attempt at scoring a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. In the U.S., relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks have accused the Saudi government of having potential ties to the attack. (A direct link has not been proven.)But it has also made significant inroads with some powerful figures in the West, most notably the Trump family. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner worked with the Saudis to secure a $2 billion investment in his firm and recently partnered with the country’s public investment fund to strike a $55 billion deal to take the video game giant Electronic Arts private. Trump has maintained a close relationship with the crown prince throughout the Saudi royal’s fraught tenure. View this post on Instagram A post shared by TURKI ALALSHIKH تركي آل الشيخ (@turki) The festival and subsequent fallout has also provided a rare window into these events and, in particular, the money and self-censorship often involved.One comedian, Atsuko Okatsuka, posted screenshots to Threads of what she said was her invite to the festival, including a section on “Content Restrictions” that prohibited the artists from performing material that “may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule” the country, its royal family or any religion.“A lot of the ‘you can’t say anything anymore!’ Comedians are doing the festival 😂” Okatsuka wrote. “they had to adhere to censorship rules about the types of jokes they can make.”Mike Birbiglia and Leslie Liao were among the comics who responded to her post, sharing that they had rejected the offer as well.Stavros Halkias similarly revealed in a podcast episode with Distefano, who did agree to perform, that he didn’t take the deal. Distefano told Halkias that while he “didn’t want to do it either,” his fiancée had ultimately urged him to “take that f—ing money.”At least one comedian, however, appears to have changed his mind despite initially agreeing to perform. Nimesh Patel, who was slated to get on stage Sunday, posted a TikTok video over the weekend sharing that he recently canceled his appearance after “having a change of heart.” That video has since become unavailable.“I’ll just do 40 shows that I had not planned on doing here in the perfectly clean, moral, above-everyone-else, United States of America — I’m tired just thinking about it — to make up for the lost bag,” Patel said.Meanwhile, comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon said in an episode of his podcast that he was dropped from the festival for making a joke about the country “having slaves.”“I’m gonna get fired again from people that are not even Saudis. I’m gonna get fired by people who don’t chop hands off. I’m gonna get fired by reasonable people. I’m gonna get fired by people that don’t practice Shariah law,” Dillon said. “This is the most controversial the people who fire me will ever be. Let me relish in this. Let’s take this win.”The Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation about the cancellation of Patel’s and Dillon’s shows.Angela YangAngela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.Natasha Lebedeva contributed.
October 18, 2025
Oct. 18, 2025, 7:00 AM EDTBy Carlo AngererRIGA, Latvia — They’re dotted on dozens of buildings across the Latvian capital: signal green signs with white stick figures of a family and the word “patvertne,” which means shelter.Installed everywhere from art deco buildings to wooden gates, the signs alert people to places to hide in the event of an attack — and have become one of many symbols of war preparedness in this charming city, which is crisscrossed with canals and looks nervously east at its Russian neighbor.After a string of recent aircraft incursions along NATO’s eastern flank and suspicious drones shutting down airports in several European countries including Germany, Denmark and Norway, fears about Russian aggression are growing in Latvia and its fellow Baltic nations, Estonia and Lithuania, already spooked by Moscow’s war in Ukraine.“We are on the front line. We are the eastern flank countries. We are neighboring Russia, an aggressive country,” Andris Sprūds, Latvia’s defense minister, told NBC News earlier this month at the Riga Conference, a meeting of international political and military leaders.A building marked “patvertne,” the Latvian word for “shelter,” in the capital, Riga.Carlo Angerer / NBC NewsHe added that Latvia, which launched a drone initiative earlier this year, had to some extent “already developed some resilience” in the face of any Kremlin aggression.Other attendees openly talked about a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. In an onstage discussion at the conference, Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to the organization, publicly theorized with his fellow panelists about weapons systems, including long-range missiles and strategic bombers, that could be used against the Kremlin’s forces.But he also emphasized that modern warfare begins before troops and military hardware are deployed.“The first shot of the next war is not going to be tanks through the Suwalki Gap,” he said in a separate interview with NBC News, referring to the narrow land bridge between Poland and the Baltic states, seen as a potential attack point in a Russian invasion. “It’s going to be a cyberattack. It’s going to be knocking out airports or critical infrastructure.”Latvia and other Baltic countries have been very receptive to recent NATO initiatives and are on track to reach defense spending targets soon, he said, adding that they were “investing in things that are going to field more capabilities for our defense and deterrence.”Emergency services have identified hundreds of existing shelters in Riga and authorities are planning to build new ones.Carlo Angerer / NBC News“The investments that make each individual ally stronger and therefore the collective alliance stronger are the important investments, and a country like Latvia is certainly doing it best in class right now,” he added.Adm. Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO’s military committee from June 2021 until January, also suggested that a new conflict with Russia would be fought “in a different way.”Ukraine, he said, lacked air power and strong naval assets, adding that NATO fighter jets had been carrying out missions over the Baltics from the USS Gerald Ford after it was deployed to the North Sea earlier this year.Others, like Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, openly acknowledged that it took “way too long” for other nations to listen to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which were occupied by the Soviet Union for decades and more recently have been at the forefront of pushing NATO allies to take the Russian threat seriously.Airis Rikveilis, the national security adviser to Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina, said his country was not only focusing on increasing military capabilities, but also on preparing civil society for conflict.“This is not going to be 1940,” he said, referring to the first Soviet occupation, when the Red Army was able to take over within weeks. “Should that battle start tomorrow, we’ll be ready to fight tomorrow with what we have,” he added.After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been visible changes across Latvia, which has installed a fence along its 176-mile border with Russia. It has also cut itself off from the shared power grid with Russia and Kremlin ally Belarus, which sits to Latvia’s south, and is now relying on energy from its other neighbors.Ukrainian flags fly outside the Russian Embassy in Riga, Latvia.Carlo Angerer / NBC NewsIn Riga, officials have demolished the 260-foot victory memorial dedicated to the Soviet army and renamed the road where the Russian Embassy is located to Ukrainian Independence Street.The blue street sign sits at the corner building next to the embassy’s CCTV cameras and under its large flag. Dozens of Ukrainian flags fly in the square just across the road.Linda Ozola, who served as Riga’s deputy mayor for five years until this summer, oversaw the rebuilding of the shelter network, among other civil protection measures. She said her staff had to scout museums and archives for old documents, as well as reinspect old shelter spaces, some of which had fallen into disrepair.Emergency services have identified hundreds of existing shelters, and updated legislation has cleared the way to build new ones. Their locations are available on a website and cellphone app.Some of them will likely be funded by an 85 million euro ($99.4 million) deal signed on the sidelines of the Riga Conference by Arvils Ašeradens, Latvia’s finance minister, and European allies. The majority of that funding will be used to enhance the civil protection infrastructure, and some will also be used to install generators at health care facilities.Ozola said the city has also started to build up a stock of emergency supplies including canned food and sleeping cots. Riga has been an example for the other regions of Latvia and could also be one for cities across Europe, she said.“The truth is not good because we have a crazy neighbor who wants to destroy our country. And the neighbor is not hiding that, really,” she said. “They haven’t physically crossed the border, but they have crossed the airspace and they have cut our critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.”Carlo AngererCarlo Angerer is a multimedia producer and reporter based in Mainz, Germany. 
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