Lemdro.id

A ship suspected of damaging an underwater cable running between Helsinki and Tallinn has been seized by police.

Finnish officials say the vessel is suspected of being “responsible for the damage to the cable” owned by the telecoms group Elisa and located in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone.

No details about the identity of the vessel were disclosed.

The cable was damaged in the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea bordered by Estonia, Finland and Russia.

Elisa, which is based in Helsinki, detected a fault in its cable early on Wednesday and reported it to Finnish authorities, police said.

Elisa's data cable between Helsinki and Tallinn was damaged on Wednesday, according to the Finnish telecom firm.

According to a police statement, the Border Guard located a vessel suspected of causing the damage. Finnish authorities took control of the ship as part of a joint operation.

The suspected vessel was intercepted by the Border Guard patrol ship Turva and a helicopter in Finland's exclusive economic zone, while the cable damage reported by Elisa is located in Estonia's economic zone.

The police have consulted the National Prosecutor's Office, which has issued a prosecution order.

Police are investigating the incident as aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage and aggravated interference with telecommunications.

Last Christmas, an oil tanker called Eagle S dragged its anchor along the seabed, damaging several undersea cables between Finland and Estonia. The captain of the vessel claimed the incident was accidental.

Following a trial this past autumn, Helsinki District Court said it lacked jurisdiction in the case.

At 1:00pm on Wednesday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a post on social site X that the country "is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary.

Donald Trump is drawing renewed criticism after responding to the death of Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of the 35th president, John F Kennedy, on Tuesday by reposting criticism of the Kennedy family on Truth Social.

Schlossberg, 35, was an environmental journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. She passed away after being diagnosed with a rare type of acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer.

But rather than pay tribute to the deceased or express condolences to her grieving family, the president fired out three posts consisting of screenshots of negative comments about the Kennedys' supposed neglect of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the performing arts venue Trump has taken over this year and rebranded the "Trump Kennedy Center."

But China has upped its game. In Pingdingshan, a once-struggling coal city in the central province of Henan, coal is no longer just mined and burned – it’s being chemically transformed into nylon, one of the most important and widely used synthetic polymers in the world.

From Marcy Mohler

Female snowy owl at dusk.

Not as many Snowy owls as in past years unfortunately. I found a few but this lady was the best subject.

Dec 29., 2025

The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels, according to two people familiar with details of the operation who requested anonymity to discuss the classified matter.

The first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September marks a significant escalation in the administration’s months-long pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government. The strike has not been acknowledged by Venezuelan officials.

A somewhat diminished crowd compared to usual in Canberra due to a storm earlier, but the fireworks still looked nice.

From Paul Bannick

Central American Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium griseiceps) Woodpeckers created cavities are the typical nest site for many species of owls, including the Central American Pygmy-Owl. This small owl (13-18cm/50-59g) can only be found on from on the lowland Caribbean slope from southeastern Mexico to western Ecuador.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/52511055

The escalation of threats to Venezuela by United States President Donald Trump may be easy to dismiss as one of his random whims, but it is too closely linked to major confrontations to be seen as a regional affair with limited impact on the rest of the world.

Venezuela is turning into a bargaining chip in the game of global superpowers, along with Ukraine.

Not a major power at all, Venezuela still matters globally – not only as a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but also as a political ally of China, Iran and Russia – countries the US-led West sees as its archrivals. Of these three, Russia is the one which finds itself in the most delicate position when it comes to Venezuela. The US-driven escalation poses risks for the Kremlin, but there are also potential gains to be made.

The main factor is the unexpected thaw which happened in relations between the US and Russia during Trump’s second term as president.

Since Putin’s ascent to power in 2000, the Kremlin has seen the US first as an unreliable partner, then as a full-fledged adversary with an ambition to divide and rule in the ex-Soviet neighbourhood.

But it all suddenly went back to a partnership of sorts when Trump returned to the White House at the beginning of 2025. The US all but terminated its financial aid to Ukraine and adopted the posture of near-neutrality, though it still supplies crucial intelligence to the Ukrainian army. In the latest iteration of its National Security Strategy, the US even dropped Russia from the list of “direct threats”.

There is also the aspect of cynical political calculation. The geopolitical gains from the US launching a military attack on Venezuela potentially exceed the losses.

That is because it would put Russia and the US on an equal moral footing with regard to the war in Ukraine. If the US can dictate its will by means of military aggression in what Americans call “their backyard”, then why can Russia not do the same in its own? The US aggression in Venezuela would justify Russian aggression in Ukraine in the eyes of many, especially in the Global South. Handily for the Kremlin, it would also sow further divisions between the US and Europe as well as feed polarisation within the US itself.

If, in addition to Venezuela, the Trump administration presses forward with its irrational desire to occupy Greenland, the situation would be ideal for the Kremlin. It may even open avenues for post-Ukraine rapprochement with the EU-led part of Europe, currently its main global nemesis.

Generally, the Russians see themselves as the keepers of the old order, ultimate foreign policy conservatives. They see the US-led West as a revisionist force responsible for undoing the post-World War II order and see the war in Ukraine as a way of countering that revision.

But, as their thinking goes, if there is no return to the old order, for which the West is to blame, let us negotiate a new one: an order in which the US does as it pleases in its Western hemisphere, and Russia retains influence over the ex-Soviet neighbourhood.

Mali and Burkina Faso said late Tuesday they would ban U.S. citizens from entering their countries in retaliation for Donald Trump’s decision to ban Malian and Burkinabe citizens from entering the United States.

The announcements, made in separate statements by the foreign ministers of the two West African countries, marked the latest twist in the frosty relationship between West African military governments and the U.S.

On Dec. 16, Trump expanded earlier travel restrictions to 20 more countries, including Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which are run by juntas and have formed a breakaway association from the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States.

From Santisouk Photography

Lifer and my 13th species of owl in AB (Petit-duc des montagnes) (Southern AB - November 19, 2025)