For a time, it was the official stance of the Inquistan Orthodox Church to vehemently deny even the faintest possible existence of the UNSR. While Archbishop Mikaela Kligenberg has no ideological qualms allying herself with communists or socialists, as seen with her personal and diplomatic closeness to the Czechoslavonic President, her undying loyalty to one of her best friends, Queen Anastasia, led her to accept Firoux's radical stance of only recognizing the Nicoleizian government in exile. Despite this, the Archbishop had also pushed for a reconciliation of the various Nicoleizian governments, even hoping to bring some sort of unity agreement between socialist and democratic forces with the help of President Reiserová.

However, things have drastically changed over the last while. The officially non-existent UNSR split, with the north remaining as an increasingly more authoritarian UNSR, while the south emerged as a newfound democratic republic. While the Nicoleizian government in exile never returned to power, the south became the official beacon of Nicoleizian democracy. While the country split, both sides have officially recognized each other, effectively bringing legitimacy to both the UNSR and the newfound republic in the south.

Inquista now recognizes both Icholasens, and the Archbishop even more enthusiastically supports a reunification of the two countries under one banner. In her first official visit to the UNSR, the Archbishop is looking to normalize relations between Inquista and the UNSR, and to build goodwill to support reunification efforts.

The Archbishop's plane was now enroute to the UNSR, where she was eager to attend the Christmas soirée. As Christmas was by far the most dominant social, cultural and religious celebration in Inquista, the Archbishop didn't even think twice of why a communist state would be celebrating the festive occasion.

"Everyone loves Christmas, right? I mean, it's lovely time of year with the best atmosphere. The movies are great... especially those Hallmark ones! They're are all so unique, with those unpredictable endings that always get me, like who would of thought the city girl would go back to her small town and get back with her high school fling!? So cute!" Mikaela sighed sweetly as she turned to Captain Jimin, who was sitting beside her in the co-pilot seat of the cockpit.

The Archbishop had gotten bored of always sitting as a passenger in her private jet, and had started learning how to fly herself under the supervision of her beloved private pilot. 627 hours logged into Flight Simulator on Steam had really begun to pay dividends for the Archbishop, whose Twitch livestreams of her Flight Simulator let's plays even led to Beyonce completely copying her entire gaming fit, including the pink headset THAT SHE WORE FIRST (as stated by Mikaela's cease and desist letter to Jay-Z).

"You know that Bina has been in a few films like that? I've watched all of her movies, they're SO good. Ugh, it's no wonder her people love her, she is T-A-L-E-N-T-E-D", the Archbishop emphasized enthusiastically. "And the music! So good! My entire Spotify Wrapped is all Christmas music, and that's because I can't help but to begin listening to it starting in July. I feel so embarrassed because I never share my Wrapped with anybody, they don't get it."

The Archbishop turned to Captain Jimin and let go of the plane's control to continue her point, but the captain quickly freaked out and signaled to her to pay attention to her mission at hand.

Mikaela tried her best to make the descent to the airport, and after a rocky and shaky landing, managed to complete her first complete voyage as the primary pilot of her private jet.

"Nailed it, right?" Mikaela asked calmly while Captain Jimin flinched at her suggestion. "What? I asked calmly?" Mikaela asked calmly.

The Archbishop then pulled out hand mirror from a nearby cubby and examined herself as she repositioned her pastel pink santa hat. "I hope I came dressed properly for the occasion. It's Christmas themed, I think, or something. I don't know. The instructions weren't clear at all. I came dressed in costume just in case."

The Archbishop then got up and walked to a mirror that had been installed the plane's small lounge and began to admire herself.

"So cute!"

The Archbishop then departed from the plane and made her way to her her specially requested pink limousine. As she approached the pink limousine, a very large crowd of Nicoleizians had gathered to catch a glimpse of the Archbishop as she made her first visit to the UNSR. "Ich bin ein Icholasener!" Mikaela announced, with her hand raised, to the crowd before stepping into her limousine which took her to the soiree.

Upon arriving at the soiree, the Archbishop performed her usual ritual of beelining straight to getting some drinks. "I'll have a White Nicoleizian, please! As they say, once you go White, well... I don't know what they say actually. Two shots, though, please?"

Nation Name: The Most Blessed State of Inquista
Artist: Addison Rae
Song: Diet Pepsi
Link to youtube: LINK
Vote deliverer with their image linked: Madame Marco
Link to your flag: LINK

The Daily Dominion

All the News You Need to Hear

Next Generation Network Alliance Officially Releases DAGK Protocol to the Public

VERINTENO - The NGNA, a joint committee of the Duxburian Central Bank and Federal Blockchain Alliance, has now launched their highly advanced DAGK 1.0 consensus protocol. Programmed by world-renowned computer science experts Grandmaster Brandeus Devoy, Grandmaster Andres Marian, and Master Kade Nelson, DAGK utilizes much higher mathematical algorithms than previous partially-synchronus, directed acrylic graph of blocks protocols such as LINK X and Ripple X.

The permissionless, paramaterless protocol's transaction ordering logic is agnostic to its network latency, enabling it to scale to the size of the hardware that runs it, rendering its transactions-per-second cap theoretically infinite. DAGK's capabilities are limited only by the speed, size, and power of the internet itself. The protocol can finalize some closer transactions at speeds under 50 milliseconds vs the 2-5 second window of the older Ripple X network.

DAGK is published as an open source specification that anyone may use free for any purpose. The Duxburian government and financial sector plan on implementing a closed-source version of the protocol for payments processing by the end of the year, while some smaller credit alliances may be up and running with it far sooner.

The FBA will now deprecate the LINK X network, although as a decentralized specification, any entity running it may continue to run it indefinitely.

The Union of Duxburian Dominions always welcomes more competition in payment processing. We tried this in the past with the Eurocard idea, but it didn't gain traction as councillors did not want to use a private contractor. In the time since then, payment processing has really advanced with mobile pay, direct ID card pay, Ripple X, BDAG, and now the cutting edge DAGK protocol. In order to be successful, EuroPay needs to have the flexibility to change and adapt with such massive leaps in technological sophistication. Payments, especially inter-bank, are no longer linear transmissions of money, they are massively parallel transmissions of asset-agnostic, platform-agnostic data. The idea of a consumer-facing retail bank itself is on the cusp of becoming obsolete.

Most of the proposed act does seem to account for changes in technology that would keep the network relevant. That said, I agree that the new technologies clause could be struck since it shouldn't limit itself to anything specific, plus if the network needs updating, it'll just get updated, enumerating such is unnecessary. Councillor Tilkanas holds a very outdated view of what the crypto world actually is these days, but that's a debate for some other act and some other time.

I agree with striking the sanctions clause. My government still holds sanctions as a step akin to declaring war with prejudice, and as it expects full military retaliation for any sanctions issued...it will simply never agree to issue any.

The Union of Duxburian Dominions lacks a conventional "chargeback" system since that would interfere with the infinite outbound scalability of the DAGK protocol, however, the clause allows for refunds to be issued as separate transactions so nothing needs to be amended there.

Chip and pin is far too antiquated to use, but again we don't need an amendment with how it's worded.

I do want to propose some minor amendments:

Amendment Four:
Change all references of "banks" to "financial institutions".

Amendment Five:
V.The network shall be funded by a percentage of transaction payment processing fee up to a cap and per card card issuing an origination fee charged to issuing financial institutions banks for every physical card tradeline number issued on the EuroPay network.

Physical cards aren't really a thing anymore and banks are not the only entities that may be authorized to originate cards, so these clauses should have more flexibility. It's important to note that a "tradeline number" does not include one-time use virtual privacy numbers or the user-changeable numbers on modern card accounts that don't have default card numbers baked in. A tradeline number is the overarching identifier for whatever form their core "card" takes and the fee only needs to be paid again when that overarching "card" needs to be re-issued.

Everything else about the act seems fine to me.

Wesley Greene
Councillor-General of the Duxburian Union

Nik Asgard amte primo mani, Master-General of Land

Nik Asgard finally arrived in Europolis after sailing across the strait and then taking various public transit to reach the city. It took forever and made him arrive later than other dignitaries, but gotta practice what you preach, right? Of course, he had help from random people who recognized him not as a government official, but as a rare descendant of the first men of Azrekko. There was no hiding his visual heritage - the skin complexion of the greatest of all men who built the ancient Azrekkian world with nothing but their hands. Nik's heritage had already helped him become a huge hit among the rural Duxburians he needed to connect with as the new Master-General of Land, the Duxburian equivalent of a Ministry of Interior. Rural Duxburians, so hard for most government officials to reach and understand, practically revered the first men as the ultimate "masculine tough guys" of the desert, and thus they embraced Nik as one of their own despite being young and pretty ordinary all things considered. He alone could persuade them to do various things that liberal nanny men couldn't make them do, and that is why the government had decided to send him to the environmental conference over other, more well-known Duxburians.

However, Nik was far from any kind of tough guy in Europolis, shivering in the temperate air. Gawd, this place was soooooooooo fucking cold. Nik hailed from one of the hottest places on earth, the Valley of the Sun, which sat well below sea level in far southeastern Azrekko. According to legend, the Sun Kings of Azrekko built a forbidden city in the inhospitable valley for safely storing the gold reserve of their kingdom. While the forbidden city did indeed exist, and continues to exist due to an oasis (the invention of air conditioning helped too), the treasury was lost and never found, remaining one of the great mysteries of the country. Nik's Asgard bloodline never managed to leave this place, thus he was born to tolerate its scorching weather.

Layers, layers! Nik put on another jacket. One of the reasons he was here was concern that the climate was warming too rapidly, but now he wasn't so sure! He also didn't expect much from the conference. He was unlikely to see eye-to-eye with the rest of Europe on things like ICE vehicles (when gasoline still cost less than water), or preventing the spread of agriculture (with some of the largest food-producing regions of anywhere), and especially the continued lack of any real transition plan for workers and skills. However, the modern Duxburian Union wasn't all that far away from the European nanny libs in many categories like energy generation and recycling, so signing a deal was a very real possibility. Either way, it was worth his time. If nobody acted, his home of thousands of years would become uninhabitably hot, the desert could expand, and the food supply could be threatened.

Nik briefed his translator on what he planned to talk about. He could technically speak 4 languages fluently on his own, but his 2 best were ancient ones and his English came with an accent some thousands of years older than English itself that probably made it almost unintelligible to native speakers. Ah, the joys of coming from such an isolated time capsule of a place.

It would soon be time to meet the nanny libs and hear what wild ideas they have this go-around...

The Kingdom of Reitzmag's Assembly for the European Council has decided through a vote with the presence of all members as follows:

Question: Support the 2024 Amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Right to Marriage.

Ayes - 0
Noes - 10
Abtentions - 1

The Ayes have it. The Ayes have it.

Therefore, the Kingdom of Reitzmag votes AGAINST this act.

Dame Yuridiana Yahontov GCC
Councilor, Kingdom of Reitzmag

On behalf of the Union of Duxburian Dominions, I vote AGAINST thia act.

Wesley Greene
Councillor-General of the Duxburian Union

On behalf of the Union of Duxburian Dominions, I vote AGAINST the act.

Wesley Greene
Councillor-General of the Duxburian Union

On behalf of the Union of Duxburian Dominions, I vote as follows:

Nuclear Seat:
| Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom
|| President Alberto Núñez Feijóo of the Kingdom of Spain

Non-Nuclear Seat:
| Prime Minister Elizabeth Íkrat of the Republic of Istkalen
|| Prime Minister John Peter Key of the United Duchies

Wesley Greene
Councillor-General of the Duxburian Union

July 18th 2024, 6:00am
RAF Hampton

The day had finally come.

Preparations throughout the many places were events will take place during the 3-day visit have been planned and executed throughout the days leading to the occasion. Security has been heightened in both land, sea, and air with police and military personnel being deployed to critical areas. Meanwhile, supporters and fans have lined up the roads from RAF Hampton to the State Guest House where the Spanish Delegation will stay and take a rest before the events begin.

Up in the air, RAF pilots have been dispatched to monitor for any disturbances in the air. A flight of 6 Felon F.15 fighters from the No. 25 Squadron RAF were deployed to fetch the incoming VIP aircraft and escort it on its way to the air base. Back on the ground, the red carpet has been rolled out and the honour guards are making a last minute rehearsal.

30 minutes before the arrival, the honor guards from the RAF march into the apron and the press were allowed into the area to begin the coverage.