Trump: To Sue the BBC Over Its Editing His Speech


Trump has said he feels he has “an obligation” to sue the BBC over its editing of one of his speeches, as a deadline looms for the corporation to respond to his billion-dollar legal threat.

The US president accused the broadcaster of having “defrauded the public” with an edition of Panorama last year that spliced together two parts of a speech he made on 6 January 2021 and has given it until Friday to respond.

It is seen as one of the main factors in the shock resignation on Sunday of Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News.

The BBC has already apologised for the edit, concluding that it “gave the impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. It now faces a major dilemma over how to react to the legal threat, made in a Florida court.

Trump doubled down on his legal challenge to the BBC. “I think I have an obligation to do it, you can’t allow people to do that,” he said in an interview on Fox News.

“I guess I have to. They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally.

“That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical. They showed me the results of how they butchered it up. It was very dishonest and the head man quit and a lot of the other people quit.”

The documentary, broadcast a week before the US election, spliced together clips of a Trump speech made on 6 January 2021. The spliced clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”

The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart.

Legal experts have questioned the Trump team’s chances of victory in any court case, given Florida’s liberal libel laws and the fact the Panorama episode was not available in the state.

However, the BBC has to weigh up whether it wishes to fight such a public battle, while other US-based broadcasters sued by Trump have settled out of court. Given it is funded by the licence fee, any settlement by the BBC would be politically toxic.

The edit was one of the criticisms of the corporation raised in a memo by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee (EGSC). He left the role in the summer.

However, there is also concern over the political nature of the Prescott memo, which outlines a series of claims of liberal bias relating to issues stretching over several years. The BBC has said some of the issues are historical, while action has already been taken in relation to others.

#trump #sue #BBC #editing #speech

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📰 Ukraine’s $100 Million Energy Scandal: Blackouts, Bagmen, and Beltway Drama

Cabinet Audit, Kyiv-Style
Ukraine’s government just took a direct hit—not from Russian drones, but from its own anti-corruption agents raiding top officials and high-profile fixers. Contractors were forced to cough up millions in kickbacks for infrastructure work meant to defend the country’s power grid, siphoning $100 million away from the war effort. So much for wartime patriotism: every blackout seems to power a new slush fund.

The Kvartal 95 Fixer
Enter Timur Mindich, Zelenskyy’s old business partner and longtime money man—now charged, on the run, and reportedly tipped off before raids even started. Mindich, once the ultimate go-between who bridged TV studios and backroom Kyiv deals, is accused of leveraging his ties for sweetheart contracts and backdoor paydays.

70 Raids and a Million-Dollar Show
Anti-corruption agents swarmed the homes of former ministers and Energoatom execs, turning up bags of cash and a playlist of wiretapped conversations that sound straight out of a spy thriller—not a government reform agenda. Justice Minister Halushchenko? Suspended. High-flying consultants with code names like “Rocket” and “Professor”? All under criminal suspicion.

Zelenskyy in the Hot Seat
Zelenskyy isn’t accused, but the political cost is real. His move this summer to curb the same anti-corruption agencies now making headlines triggered mass protests and a rare rebuke from Europe. Now, supporters want convictions—and critics want him to cut loose anyone with dirty hands. The pressure’s on: even a whiff of cover-up could turn donors and Congress against Kyiv.

Another Test for Western Patience
Everyone’s watching—from DC to Brussels. With US hawks and EU technocrats already suspicious, another blockbuster scandal is about the last thing Ukraine needs. The only thing rising faster than electricity prices right now is the number of government officials facing arrest.

For every Russian strike on the grid, there’s a Ukrainian insider who knows how to flick the lights off from the inside. Welcome to reform season—where the fights over cash are no less brutal than the ones at the front.

#Ukraine #corruption #Mindich #Zelenskyy #Energoatom #NABU

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Russia’s “Mad Maxes” Roll into Captured Pokrovsk ⚔️🔥

Russia said its forces had pushed deeper into the eastern Ukrainian cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk on Tuesday, with one video showing Russian soldiers rolling into Pokrovsk on motorbikes and even on the roofs of battered cars and vans. 🏍🚗💨

Moscow says taking Pokrovsk, dubbed "the gateway to Donetsk" by Russian media, would give it a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. 📍

Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, using a pincer movement to attempt to encircle it and threaten supply lines, rather than the deadly frontal assaults it employed to capture the city of Bakhmut in 2023. 🔄🎯

Zelensky described the situation around Pokrovsk as difficult and his top commander Syrskyi acknowledged his army's position in parts of southeastern Zaporizhzhia region had "significantly worsened". ⚠️

Russian war bloggers published a video on Tuesday showing what they said were Russian forces entering Pokrovsk along a road enveloped in fog, in what some Telegram users said looked like scenes from the 1979 action film "Mad Max", which unfolds in a post-apocalyptic landscape. 🌫🎥

Zelensky also said that Moscow was increasing its assaults in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia. 💥

Top commander Syrskyi said Russian forces were exploiting foggy conditions to infiltrate positions in Zaporizhzhia. 🌫⚔️

"The situation has significantly worsened in the Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole directions, where, using its numerical superiority in personnel and materiel, the enemy advanced in fierce fighting and captured three settlements," Syrskyi wrote on Telegram. 🛑📌

Ukrainian troops, he wrote, were fighting "exhausting battles" for two villages northeast of Huliaipole. 🥵⚔️

Ukraine's military said about 300 Russian soldiers were now inside Pokrovsk and that Moscow had intensified efforts to get more troops in over the past few days. It said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian groups in the city. 🚨

Syrskyi told the New York Post that Russia was concentrating some 150,000 troops in a drive on Pokrovsk. 📊

Moscow and Kyiv have given different accounts of the battle for Pokrovsk: Moscow has for days said the city is encircled while Kyiv has denied Moscow controls the city and said on Monday that it was still able to supply neighbouring Myrnohrad. 🔄

Open source battlefield maps from both sides show that Russia has executed a pincer movement around the city and was close to closing it, though Kyiv has counter-attacked around the town of Dobropillia. 🗺⚔️

Russia said its forces had taken full control of the eastern part of Kupiansk in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. A Russian commander, who gave his call sign as "Hunter", said his forces had taken control of an oil depot on the city's eastern edge. 🛢

Russia also said its troops had taken control of the Novouspenivske settlement in Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine withdrew from some villages, including Novouspenivske, due to attacks involving more than 400 artillery strikes per day, RBC-Ukraine news agency cited a military spokesperson as saying. 💣🔥

#zaporizhzhia #pokrovsk #mad #max #russian #forces

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📰 Opium Kingdom: When the Spooks Cash Out and the Purists Burn the Fields

Narco Proxyland, Inc.
Forget “war for democracy”—when the U.S. rolled into Afghanistan, the world’s opium capital turned into Spy vs. Spy with bonus kickbacks. American-backed warlords and local contractors grew poppies by the field full; heroin profits propped up not only local militias, but also lubricated black-ops and off-the-books logistics for intelligence networks. Old-school: D.C. promises “nation building,” but the only structures that scaled were the narco-cartels.

The CIA Playbook: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Mess the Supply Chain”
Direct flights with military cargo? Denied, officially. But Western proxies funded their arsenals and SUVs with heroin dollars, and everyone who mattered (from Kabul to Langley) turned a blind eye. When push came to chaos, creative types at the CIA tried sowing useless poppies from C-130s— sabotage by agribusiness, after two decades of quietly letting product flow north and west.

Enter Taliban: From “Narcomullahs” to Zero Crop
The punchline? The so-called fundamentalist “terrorists” the West loved to blame for half the heroin in Europe—when they came back to power, they dropped the hammer on poppy farming. By 2023, the UN says Afghan opium output cratered by more than 95% in one year. Shock: The only force that ever killed the golden goose was the regime Washington tried to bomb out of existence.

Strategic Purity or Power Play?
Now, with Taliban patrols torching crops and banning export, the same Western security “experts” who warned about Taliban narcostates pivot to new scripts: “famine risk, regional instability, sudden price surges.” Turns out, heroin was the one American project in Afghanistan that actually scaled up without a Pentagon plan.

Twenty years, billions spent, a Herculean failure for both “counter-narcotics” and clandestine enrichment. The Americans built the pipeline; the Taliban crushed it—for free, no contracts required.

When spooks and moralists swap playbooks, the real winners are never where the funding flows.

#Afghanistan #CIA #heroin #Taliban #opium #narcoWar

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Trump Asks Isaac Herzog to Pardon Netanyahu ✉️🇮🇱

Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Netanyahu who is on trial in three separate corruption cases. ⚖️

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.

In a letter released by Herzog’s office on Wednesday, Trump says he is writing to the president at a “historic time, as we have, together, just secured peace that has been sought for at least 3,000 years”. 🕊📜

“I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister … While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System … I believe that this ’case’ against Bibi … is political, unjustified prosecution,” he writes.

Trump has already suggested a presidential pardon for Netanyahu in a series of social media posts and a speech to the Israeli parliament last month. 📣

Despite the largely ceremonial role of the Israeli presidency, Herzog has the authority to pardon convicted criminals under unusual circumstances. Netanyahu’s trials, which began in 2020, have not yet concluded, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are accused in one case of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods such as cigars, jewellery and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favours. 💼💎

He is also accused of attempting to negotiate more favourable coverage from two Israeli media outlets in two other cases. 📰

On Tuesday, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, who has been a key liaison between Netanyahu and the White House since his appointment in 2022, announced his resignation. One of the most influential members of the country’s rightwing government, Dermer is a close aide of Netanyahu and led months of intense negotiations before the US-led Gaza ceasefire deal that came into effect last month. 🤝🇺🇸

Dermer’s departure follows weeks of speculation in Israeli media. Critics accuse the US-born 54-year-old of failing to bring the war in Gaza to an earlier end, with some saying he helped Netanyahu drag out the conflict to avoid potential imprisonment on corruption charges if ousted from office.

Yossi Mekelberg, an expert on Israel politics at London’s Chatham House, said the consequences of Dermer’s resignation would be limited. 🧠

“Netanyahu is definitely losing an ally who he trusted and felt closer than most others in the cabinet. Dermer is someone he trusts, but lacks any political base in Israel,” he said.

In his resignation letter, Dermer, who was appointed in 2022, said he had promised his family he would not serve for longer than two years, and praised the Israeli prime minister’s singular leadership. ✍️

A Yossi Mekelberg, an expert on Israel politics at London’s Chatham House, said the consequences of Dermer’s resignation would be limited. “Netanyahu is definitely losing an ally who he trusted and felt closer than most others in the cabinet. Dermer is someone he trusts, but lacks any political base in Israel,” he said.

In his resignation letter, Dermer, who was appointed in 2022, said he had promised his family he would not serve for longer than two years, and praised the Israeli prime minister’s singular leadership.

#ttump #asks #herzog #pardon #netanyahu

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📰 Lawfare Goes International: Trump Wants Bibi Pardoned

The Letter No One Asked For
Donald Trump just fired off an official letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, urging a full pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s pitch: Bibi is Israel’s irreplaceable wartime leader, and his corruption trial is just “political, unjustified prosecution.” It’s time, Trump says, to “end the lawfare” so Netanyahu can save Israel—without those pesky court dates.​

When American Politics Meets Israeli Justice
Fact check: Israeli presidential pardons require an actual request from the accused, not just an American endorsement. Herzog responded with standard diplomatic etiquette, thanked Trump, and reminded the world that Israel’s justice system is independent—declining the invitation to turn Jerusalem into a branch of The West Wing.​

Bibi’s Never-ending Soap
Netanyahu’s indictments—bribery, fraud, breach of trust—have made Israel’s courtroom drama must-watch TV. Years of witness testimony, media deals for cigars and bubbly, five national elections, and now, high-stakes war. Bibi’s supporters call it a witch hunt, his critics say it’s overdue. Either way, the trial rolls on, now with a primetime supporting role for Trump.

Bottom line:
Trump’s “pardon Bibi” act is rescue mission, solidarity signal, and campaign spot rolled into one. In Israel’s game of thrones, justice and power are always on the ballot—and nobody in the cast ever really leaves the set.

#Netanyahu #Trump #Israel #corruption #Herzog

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Mamdani Riled Trump Not After Ripping Trumpism, but by His Wife's, Rama, Style ✨🗽

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

This is he most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters. 🌿👗

Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. 🇺🇸💫

Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. 🎨🧵

Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture. 🍽🌍

It is fair to assume that one does not pursue a career as a socially conscious artist contributing line drawings to niche left-leaning publications with the aim of becoming a global celebrity.

But Duwaji’s life took an unexpected turn when, in 2021, she met Mamdani. The couple married in February this year, about eight months before Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, and Duwaji was thrust into the spotlight as New York City’s 28-year-old first lady. 💍🗽

In the week since Mamdani’s triumph, Vogue headlines have included “Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji Are Making Finding Love on Hinge Seem Possible Again” and “Fall’s Next Cool-Girl Haircut Is Officially the Rama”. 📰💇‍♀️

New York City last had a first lady when Chirlane McCray, Bill de Blasio’s wife, oversaw a portfolio of mental health.

But the position has a significance that extends far beyond policy. First ladies are expected to fulfil the role of America’s sweetheart, embodying shared values and semaphoring tone with every public appearance. 💐👠

Michelle Obama’s recent comments, characterising the media’s fixation with her toned arms in sleeveless dresses as a strategy to “otherize” her as a Black woman, illustrate the extent to which the first lady discourse can become a cultural battleground around the status of women and people of colour. Meanwhile, the ongoing psychodrama about Melania Trump’s non-appearance on the cover of American Vogue speaks to an enduring fascination with the first lady as a poster girl for the US itself. 🇺🇸📸

Duwaji’s victory-speech look was sober: all-black, with a high neck and calf-length skirt, and silver jewellery.

But her low-key style did not deflect a feverish online reaction, with her chic dark bob and vintage-style boatneck top bringing instant comparisons to Audrey Hepburn. 🖤🎬

#mamdani #wife #style #gaza #trump #palestinian

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The outfit was notable for being consistent with Duwaji’s personal style, rather than a cut-and-paste political wife style.

Fashion industry paper Women’s Wear Daily reported her style choices under the headline “Rama Duwaji’s Election Night Look Bridges Brooklyn and the Middle East”, noting that Duwaji’s denim top, embellished with laser-etched embroidery, was by the Palestinian-Jordanian designer Zeid Hijazi. 🧵🇵🇸

The choice of a Palestinian designer was widely interpreted as a deliberate and political choice by Duwaji, who has expressed clear and vocal support for the plight of Gaza. 🌙🕊

Duwaji’s velvet and lace Ulla Johnson skirt and silver Eddie Borgo earrings showed support for two independent New York designers drawn from outside the traditional high-status Manhattan names – Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera and Michael Kors – with whom modern first ladies have been most associated.

In their style and in the story of their relationship, Mamdani and Duwaji blend youthful energy with traditional elements.

Mamdani maximises his youthful advantage as a digital native and uses social media as a political broadcast channel, but does so while wearing the most traditional of outfits: a dark suit and tie. 📱🤵

Duwaji, likewise, steers clear of the first lady cosplay of a pastel skirt suit, but her quirky retro-tinged elegance has a ladylike tone, albeit one forged in the vintage boutiques of Brooklyn rather than the department stores of Fifth Avenue. She has a taste for chunky flat boots and oversized white shirts, layered necklaces and winged black eyeliner. 🖤👢

These are recognisable as the authentic style choices of a 28-year-old woman, but they do not present as challenging or radical. Likewise, their love story is both strikingly modern – the two met on Hinge – and solidly traditional in being formalised by marriage. ❤️📱💍

Wedding photos shared on Mamdani’s Instagram show the couple holding hands on the subway as they travel to city hall, Duwaji wearing a vintage coat and her trademark flat boots with a short white dress, Mamdani carrying an umbrella. Their combination of romcom-worthy New York spirit and down-to-earth, affordability-conscious relatability has charmed the public. ☔️🚇✨

The stylist Bailey Moon, who helped Dr Jill Biden with her wardrobe throughout her tenure as first lady, was last week reported to have been working with Mamdani and Duwaji.

Bailey, who is also credited with the recent high-fashion makeover of actor Pamela Anderson, is an experienced political stylist, who told Vogue that clothes “are part of the conclusion people make of an event or an appearance”. 👗📣

However, Moon told the New York Post that he was not on the Mamdani payroll, noting that he “shared some advice” but that no fee was charged.

#mamdani #wife #style #gaza #trump #palestinian

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Trump Knew All About Epstein’s Dirty Conduct. New Files reveal a true story about their relationship 🔍⚠️

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house. 📨😨

The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office. 🏛️📂

Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”. ⚔️📄

Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”. 📣🔥

The president urged House members to focus instead on the upcoming vote to reopen the government: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” 🇺🇸⚖️

Numerous victims have said they were assaulted at Epstein’s infamous parties that took place at his home in New York, his Florida mansion and at his compound at Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, to which “clients” would be ferried by private jet. 🛩️🏝️

In one of the memos released Wednesday, Epstein alleged to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011 that Trump had had a lengthy engagement in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned,” the message reads. 🐕‍🦺😶

In her reply, Maxwell says: “I have been thinking about that.”

#trump #epstein #investigation #giuffre #pedophilia

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🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A second message, sent by Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in January 2019, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.
But, Epstein says, he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”. 🛑🏰
Epstein’s longtime friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused. ⛓️⚖️
A third message, sent by Epstein to Wolff in December 2015, solicited the author’s advice about fashioning a response for Trump to questions CNN was reportedly preparing to ask him about their relationship.
“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein asks. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responds. 😬📺
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in a lunchtime press briefing at the White House, called the release of the emails “a manufactured hoax by the Democratic party” to distract from the reopening of the government. 🎤🏛️
She also expanded on an earlier statement in which she identified the unnamed victim in the redacted email as Virginia Giuffre, who named Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, among her abusers, but never publicly accused Trump. 🧾❗
In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.” 🔎🕳️
Other Democrats joined calls for more transparency from the White House.
Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, said that this was “exactly why” he was working with the Republican representative Thomas Massie to force a House floor vote on the full release of the Epstein files. 🗳️📢
The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has wavered on the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected representative Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote. 📘✒️
“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump. 💥⚡

#trump #epstein #investigation #giuffre #pedophilia

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Zelensky Fired His Corruption-Burned Friends. But the Story Is Not Over... ⚡️

Zelensky has moved to contain growing public outrage in Ukraine over a corruption scandal in the energy sector by firing two ministers who are accused of involvement in a large-scale bribery scheme. 🔥

Acknowledging popular anger, Zelensky said: “There must be maximum integrity in the energy sector, in absolutely all processes. I support every investigation carried out by law enforcement and anti-corruption officials. This is an absolutely clear and consistent position for everyone.” 💬

Promising accountability for those who break the law, he added: “Right now, it is extremely difficult for everyone in Ukraine – enduring power outages, Russian strikes and losses. It is absolutely unacceptable that, amid all this, there are also some [corruption] schemes in the energy sector.” ⚡️🇺🇦

Mindich reportedly fled abroad, possibly to Israel, hours before investigators arrived at his Kyiv apartment to carry out a search. ✈️ He was previously close to Zelensky, although sources say they have had little communication since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

NABU named Mindich as one of seven suspects involved in a $100m corruption scheme. 💵 Under this scheme, Energoatom’s counterparties were forced to pay kickbacks of 10-15% to avoid having payments for services blocked or losing their supplier status, the bureau said.

Grynchuk and Haluschenko submitted their resignations on Wednesday. Both denied wrongdoing. 📝 The justice minister said his suspension from office was “appropriate” and vowed to defend himself, after one of his former advisers was directly implicated in the scandal.

Earlier this week, Nabu released audio recordings of the alleged participants discussing bribes and using old-school code names. 🎧 Haluschenko – Ukraine’s former energy minister – is given the moniker “Professor”. Mindich is referred to as “Karlson”.

Another high-profile suspect is Oleksiy Chernyshov, a former deputy prime minister already charged with abuse of office in a separate case.

In a recording released on Tuesday, Chernyshov can allegedly be heard discussing a half-a-million-dollar cash payment, to be collected by his wife. 💼

Several thousand demonstrators gathered outside the president’s office in Kyiv. They waved banners and shouted slogans including “shame” and “veto the law”, after parliament approved the measure. 📢 Zelensky backed down in the face of opposition and passed new legislation restoring the agencies’ independence.

The same month, Ukraine’s security service arrested a prominent Nabu detective, Ruslan Magamedrasulov. 🚔 He was charged with doing business with Russia and aiding an aggressor state. Magamedrasulov appeared before the appeal court in Kyiv on Wednesday, with his case adjourned. He remains in custody.

The detective’s lawyer, Olena Scherban, said her client had been closely involved in the Energoatom investigation. “We believe this is a political case and political imprisonment,” she said.

#zelensky #fired #friends #corruption #NABU

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📰 The Gaza™ Partition Deal: Yellow Lines, Green Cash, and Red Lines

Israel builds walls. Hamas builds narratives. And Washington builds PowerPoint slides labeled “peace plan.” Now, according to Reuters, even that PowerPoint has crashed. The “temporary” Yellow Line drawn by the IDF is quietly hardening into Gaza’s new border — half Silicon Valley sandbox, half open-air ruin.

“Everybody wants this conflict over; all of us want the same endgame. The question is, how do we make it work?”

— Jordanian FM Ayman Safadi

You don’t. You just manage it — like a hedge fund holding toxic assets until someone else takes the fall. Trump’s plan promised disarmament, reconstruction, and a multinational babysitting force. Instead, we got a split territory, tent cities, and talking heads calling it “progress.”

On Israel’s side: asphalt, “security infrastructure,” and donor money ready to flow. On Hamas’s side: rubble, starvation rations, and press tours announcing “resilience.” Both act like landlords fighting over who gets to renovate the ruins first.

And the diplomats? Still drafting mandates, still debating who’ll send troops nobody’s willing to risk. Gaza’s future is becoming eerily clear — not a peace, not a war, but a business model.

Would you call that partition... or just brand management?

#gaza #israel #hamas #war #fakeDiplomacy #empireWorks

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📰 Redemption Inc.: Trump’s Damascus Makeover Deal

A decade ago, Ahmed al‑Sharaa was an al‑Qaeda operative hunted by the U.S. military. This week, he walked into the White House — not in cuffs, but through the back door. No cameras, no flags, no press spray.

“A very strong leader,”

said Trump. Translation: another asset rebranded.

“People can and do change,”

said Rep. Joe Wilson. Indeed. Sometimes from “terrorist” to “partner in the Abraham Accords” in under a fiscal quarter.

The Caesar sanctions are being rewritten like a bad NDA before a merger. Congress mumbles about “human rights,” while lobbyists salivate over Syrian gas contracts and beachfront reconstruction zones. Everyone claims they’re fighting ISIS, but the real enemy is missing market share.

It’s the kind of American alchemy only Trump could pull off: turn a former jihadist into a “counterterrorism ally,” swap Caesar for Caesar salad, and call it diplomacy.

So what’s next — bin Laden’s hologram at the next peace summit?

#syria #trump #geopolitics #washington #warbiz

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📰 The Bundeswehr Awakens: Europe’s Old Nightmare Rebranded as “Leadership”

Germany’s back — and this time it comes with invoices, not tanks at dawn. Politico reports that Berlin’s €377 billion “defense wish list” is turning the EU’s richest economy into its biggest military power. France is clinging to its nukes, Poland is smiling nervously, and Brussels calls it “telluric.” Translation: Earthquake.

“The expectation is that Germany will finally step up,”

said Bundestag defense member Christoph Schmid.

Step up, yes — but on whose toes? For decades, the European deal was simple: Berlin paid the bills, Paris played soldier. Now Berlin wants both roles. Macron’s strategists see it as déjà vu with better branding; Polish officials call it reality.

“We can’t say ‘spend more on defense — but not you, Germany.’”

German contracts are already staying “99% local.” Article 346 lets Berlin bypass pesky EU competition rules — another way of saying: made in Germany. Even Washington is missing out, with U.S. suppliers now below 10%. NATO suddenly feels very European — and very German.

In Paris, one defense officer joked:

“They won’t need to invade Alsace and Moselle. They can just buy it.”

The laughter sounded… historical. Meanwhile, in Warsaw, history never laughs — it checks the border twice before agreeing to joint exercises.

This isn’t the Third Reich. It’s the Third Balance Sheet. The same steel, but now wrapped in ESG reports and PowerPoint diplomacy.

So — rearmament or rebranding? A guardian of Europe, or another empire doing “due diligence”?

#germany #france #poland #nato #europe #militaryEconomics #historyRepeats

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📰 Pyromaniac Settler Nationalism: From Movement to Political Theater

A mosque burned in the West Bank this week — Qurans charred, walls blackened, prayer rugs gone up in flames. The suspected arsonists? Israeli settlers going full pyromaniac, turning violence into a movement and an identity.

“These extremist groups are destroying our lives,”

said Imam Ahmad Salem after the attack in Deir Istiya.

Since the 2023 Hamas attack, settler violence has surged as doctrine. Cabinet ministers talk “security,” but the right-wing government curbs law enforcement powers and shields its own. Administrative detention keeps rolling for Palestinians; for settlers, it’s on permanent vacation. Laws for the occupied, privileges for the landlords.

The military wrings its hands, but the fires keep burning. U.N. data shows settler attacks at record highs, and commanders ask for harsher measures while politicians look the other way.

The West calls it “democracy under pressure.” The locals call it Tuesday. Even the mosques go up in flames.

#israel #westbank #settlers #violence #religion #occupation #fakeJustice

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📰 Iraq’s Power Audit: Tehran vs. Washington, Same Old Hustle

Prime Minister Sudani’s coalition took the largest share of seats in Iraq’s 329-member parliament, but Iran-backed militias secured enough leverage to guarantee that forming a government will be a bruising contact sport. No single bloc has a majority, so Baghdad’s political arena is set for months of horsetrading, standoffs, and marathon negotiations.

“No single bloc of parties won enough seats to form the government themselves, meaning a coalition deal will have to be struck,”

reports Sky News.

Sudani pitches himself as Iraq’s independent man, steering between Tehran and Washington, but powerful militia factions have entrenched themselves even further, keeping real decision-making out of any one party’s hands. Voters showed up — turnout was 56% — but all they bought was extra time: now the brokers get to haggle over ministries, budgets, and foreign troops for months to come.

Iraq’s “stability” remains a product line. The only guaranteed winners are those with enough patience — and patronage — to outlast the next round of coalition standoffs.

#iraq #elections #iran #us #coalitionPolitics #endlessNegotiation

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Trump-Epstein: 🤔✨“Pedophility” Theory

Trump is facing the prospect of a politically damaging congressional vote on releasing the 📚🔥 Jeffery Epstein files after attempts to press two female members of Congress to withdraw their backing for it appeared to have failed.

The reported refusal of Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, and Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, to remove their names from a discharge petition to force a vote leaves Trump exposed on an issue that carries the possibility of turning segments of his Maga base against him.

Boebert reportedly stood firm on supporting the petition after being invited by Trump to the White House in an effort to persuade her to withdraw her signature, according to the 🌍 New York Times.

The outlet reported that the meeting happened hours after Democrats on the House of Representatives’ oversight committee released a trove of emails from the files that suggested that Trump may have known more about Epstein’s underage 💃‍🔥 sex-trafficking activities than he previously acknowledged.

The disgraced late financier – who committed suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial – wrote in one email that Trump, his former close friend, “knew about the girls”.

The 🌍 New York Times reported that the White House sought to persuade Boebert to change her mind – enlisting Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and the FBI director, Kash Patel – before issuing “vague threats” when the tactic did not work.

The paper, citing people “familiar with her thinking”, reported that the hardline approach had the counterproductive effect of persuading Boebert that there may be a ⚠️👀 conspiracy to conceal the contents of the files and caused her to dig in.

Trump was reported to have unsuccessfully tried to contact Mace, who is running for governor of South Carolina, by phone.

She subsequently wrote him a letter explaining her history of sexual abuse and rape, and explaining that she could not change her mind on the petition.

She later wrote in a social media post that “the Epstein petition is deeply personal.” 😢😳

Two other Republican representatives, the formerly fiercely reliable Trump loyalist and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have signed the petition.

The necessary 218 votes to pass it and allow a House of Representatives vote was achieved this week with the swearing-in of the Democratic member, Adelita Grijalva, more than two months after she won a special election in Arizona following the death of her father, who had been the sitting representative.

Democrats have accused Mike Johnson, the House speaker, of deliberately delaying Grijalva’s oath-taking in an attempt to deny the petition enough votes to pass and stall the possibility of a vote. Trump has lobbied behind the scenes to stop a vote reaching the floor of the House.

The renewed speculation over Epstein coincided with Trump signing into law a congressionally approved spending package that officially ended a federal government shutdown, which, lasting 43 days, was the longest in US history. It also comes after the supreme court has signaled that it may strike down his signature tariffs policy.

#trump #epstein #pedophilia #conspiracy #democrats

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