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The Kyiv Independent’s Kateryna Denisova speaks with one of Ukraine's most prominent investigative journalists, Mykhailo Tkach, about the newly published recordings exposing corruption and money laundering inside President Volodymyr Zelensky's inner circle. Tkach explains what the so-called “Mindich tapes” reveal about alleged influence networks around Zelensky’s circle, wartime contracts, and attempts to weaken Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions. The conversation also explores how corruption allegations intersect with Ukraine’s EU ambitions, public trust, and the future of wartime governance.

Minister defends preparedness against novel threat after officials detonate device suspected to be from Ukraine

Authorities in Greece have intensified investigations into how an explosive-packed drone ended up in waters off the west of the country.

An inquiry, involving specialised military teams, broadened at the weekend after bomb disposal experts detonated the unmanned device at sea.

The Greek defence minister, Nikos Dendias, said the drone, suspected to be of Ukrainian origin, almost certainly came from “a foreign state” although he stopped short of identifying the country.

“We know what it is, and we more or less know what it contains,” he said, while also attempting to allay fears that Greece lacked the military capabilities to defend itself against such emerging technology. “We have nothing to envy, we are creating the possibilities so that our homeland can equip its combat navy with the most developed drones and anti-drone systems that currently exist.”

It is believed the drone landed close to the shores of Lefkada, a popular resort island in the Ionian, when its operators lost control and the device drifted off course. It was found by a fisher in a cave last Thursday.

Alarm over its discovery deepened on Saturday after it was reported that the long-range kamikaze drone was laden with an estimated 100kg of explosives. Greek defence ministry officials refused to confirm it was loaded with munitions.

But in a new era of warfare, where cheap and deadly drones have increasingly changed the nature of combat, the incident raised questions over maritime security in an EU member state that is more vulnerable for having Europe’s longest coastline.

The political opposition was quick to accuse Athens’ centre-right government of being ill-prepared to deal with the threat posed by such weaponry.

On Sunday, Michalis Katrinis, the main opposition Pasok party’s defence spokesperson, said: “Mr Dendias has told us he ‘knows’ [all about the drone] but the Greek people are not allowed to learn anything about its origins, the purposes it served and how it was found, moving unhindered, around Lefkada.”

Its discovery, he added, had proved that Greece was in danger of being dragged into the theatre of war.

The small nationalist, pro-Russian Greek Solution party said the chance finding was evidence of a “conscious military provocation”.

Inspection of the maritime drone was taking place at a naval base on the Greek mainland where the device had been transported. Military sources, quoted in local media, said experts were examining the robot’s serial number as well as its inbuilt GPS for clues to its origin.

With specialist teams increasingly saying the device resembled a Ukrainian-made Magura V3 naval drone, the theory that its intended target was Russian oil and gas shipping in the Mediterranean was also gaining traction.

Kyiv has admitted taking aim at tankers used to circumvent sanctions in Russia’s shadow fleet.

This month Ukrainian drones took out two ships in the Black Sea, significantly stepping up its campaign against the Russian energy sector.

Equipped with satellite communication systems, V3 drones can carry explosive loads of up to 300kg. Their lethality has been upgraded by their autonomy and speed: the unmanned vehicles can travel for up to 60 hours at a top speed of about 50mph (80kmph).

Health authorities across several countries are racing to trace and contain an outbreak of hantavirus after the World Health Organization said that five confirmed infections had been identified among people connected to the cruise ship MV Hondius.

The virus is typically associated with rodents, but it may have passed from human to human aboard the vessel, according to WHO. Since April 11, three people from the ship have died, while a handful of others are sick.

https://archive.ph/mLboS

https://archive.ph/xPSgp

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10355654

From the article:

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Protesters gather during a rally for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer earlier in the week, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Minneapolis. | John Locher/AP

WASHINGTON—An ICE agent’s killing of a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, and the ICE shooting of two other people in Portland, Ore., have sparked massive anti-ICE and anti-Trump protests in more than 1,000 cities nationwide. In some states, lawmakers are pushing anti-ICE bills in response to the violence.

The number of “ICE Out” protests had been slowly growing in the run-up to the weekend of Jan. 10-11 but skyrocketed after agents fired into the Honda SUV driven by Good. She was hit in the head and killed. In her honor, the demonstrations were rebranded “ICE Out for Good.”

One group sponsoring the protests, United We Dream, put the death toll from ICE agents and their raids at 32 nationally since the Trump administration unleashed ICE agents nationwide.

ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is conducting mass roundups, many of them violent, of people they profile as Latino, Somali in the case of Minnesota, along with whomever else they wish, according to groups opposing their actions. U.S. citizens have reportedly been among those detained in some cases and are now, with the shooting of Good, on the list of those killed.

In the course of their operations, ICE agents have also targeted bystanders, observers, business owners, and journalists, going beyond those they racially profile. Good, for instance, was white, as was her spouse, who was on the scene but uninjured. The family dog was in the back seat, and the glove compartment was full of stuffed animals they intended for local children.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also complained that when ICE grabs people out of cars, it has left them sometimes still running but in park, in the middle of the street, endangering everyone around. He reported that at least one pet dog left in a car necessitated a call to Animal Control by police to take care of the animal.

ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge” flooded the Twin Cities with 2,000 agents, and Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, said in the wake of protests that she’d send many more. The government has added as many as 1,000 agents since last week and has stepped up the raids since the killing of Good. Besides Minneapolis, big roundups and, concurrently, demonstrations, have taken place in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, New York City, Memphis, and even in small towns and on rural farms.

Speakers at many of the protests labelled Good’s killing “murder,” while Trump administration officials hit back accusing Good of being “a domestic terrorist.”

Protesters gather during a demonstration calling for an end to federal immigration enforcement operations and U.S. attacks on Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Los Angeles.| Jill Connelly/AP

In Minneapolis, Somalia residents have begun attending the demonstrations in force and taking action to defend one another from ICE agents, including one group who surrounded two agents trying to detain someone and chased them away, shouting “Out!” Fear of ICE agents has been particularly high in those communities with the barrage of Trump attacks on them recently. Some told MS-NOW reporters that they felt a particular responsibility to show solidarity with everyone else in their city.

“We honor the memory of Renee Nicole Good,” said NDLON co-Executive Director Pablo Alvaradi. “We stand in solidarity with her family and the people of Minneapolis who are mourning her senseless and tragic death. She was shot by ICE agents who should never have been there – killed by masked gunmen who continually are disturbing the peace in that beautiful, peaceful city with acts of aggression, hostility, and violence.

“As we honor Renee Nicole Good, we call upon others to do the same by recommitting ourselves to peace, nonviolence, and justice. And as we grieve for Renee, we grieve for the countless others this administration has attacked and injured, chased and tormented in custody. And we say to ICE: Get out. Leave our cities. Put away your weapons. Leave us in peace.

“The White House is working to inflame outrage and provoke more violence with lies and false accusations. We must not take their bait.”

The ICE agent killed Good, “a U.S. citizen exercising her fundamental rights,” said Workers Circle CEO Ann Toback. “It is a stark warning to all of us about where unchecked power leads. This administration’s expanding use of force against our neighbors erodes the very rights and safety that define who we are as a nation.”

“As a Jewish organization, we know what unchecked power has done in the past,” said Toback, whose group was founded to help refugees who fled Czarist-sponsored Russian pogroms (massacres) more than a century ago, before the Russian Revolution in 1917. “We must not let that take root here, today.

“Now, more than ever, we must demand transparency, accountability, and policies that protect human life, human dignity, and civil liberties for everyone. Allowing federal forces to act without independent oversight undermines justice and threatens the safety of us all.”

Cameron Kritikos, a Minneapolis grocery worker, told National Public Radio he’s worried ICE will increase its violence. “If more ICE officers are deployed to the streets, especially a place here where there’s very clear public opposition to the terrorizing of our neighborhoods, I’m nervous that there’s going to be more violence,” he said. “I’m nervous there are going to be more clashes with law enforcement officials, and at the end of the day, I think that’s not what anyone wants.”

ICE complained that “noisy people” were demonstrating, chanting, and banging pots and pans outside Twin Cities hotels that housed its agents. It also claimed one agent was hit by a thrown snowball. That prompted Mayor Frey, who had denounced Trump’s characterizations of the murder of Good as “b—s—,” to respond on social media that the city would arrest anyone who causes property damage or endangers others. “Except,” he said, “they aren’t. We are standing up to Donald Trump’s chaos not with our own brand of chaos, but with care and unity,” Frey wrote on social media.

The street protests weren’t the only reaction against ICE. State legislators are drafting measures to ban or evict ICE. Illinois State Sen. Laura Fine, D-Glenview, who is running for an open congressional seat in Illinois, filed legislation that would bar anyone hired by ICE under Trump from obtaining employment in state or local law enforcement.

Chicago, a city Fine hopes to represent, was the site of ICE’s enormous “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has been shut down, though possibly only for the winter. The suffering in Chicago continues, nevertheless. There are reports that people, rather than face harassment and danger, have self-deported, leaving behind friends, neighbors, and family in deep shock about their fate and saddened about the holes left in their own lives now.

“Praying for them is good but not enough,” a pastor of a church attended by one such family said. “We must do everything we can to stop this attack on the people of God,” he said. “The demonstrations must continue to grow across this country.” In one case, a husband and wife with two young children, one of whom was born in the U.S. and therefore a U.S. citizen, left the country and returned to the home country of their parents.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signaled she’ll support legislation to allow residents to bring civil lawsuits against federal immigration officials for constitutional violations. And sources told People’s World that Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, is considering legislation to ban local law enforcement officials from cooperating.

New Jersey State Sen. Britney Timberlake, D-East Orange, wants to write state restrictions on cooperation with ICE into law. Gubernatorial orders “now limit state and local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, bar the government and hospitals from collecting immigration information and set up guidelines on how health care facilities, schools and other institutions should respond to federal immigration authorities,” Politico reports.

“Anyone who is a descendant of a Holocaust survivor will tell you this is how it starts,” Timberlake said in a committee hearing the day after ICE killed Good. “If you don’t believe me, just ask the children of Good.” A Trump regime Homeland Security spokeswoman objected. Timberlake shot back, “If you want to stop comparisons to the Gestapo and Nazi Germany, stop behaving that way.”

It’s not only in blue states that legislators are taking action. Tennessee State Rep. Gabby Salinas, D-Memphis, filed legislation to ban ICE enforcement on school and church property. Memphis is the scene of another big ICE operation, which the red state’s governor and legislature welcome—and it impacts a city with a majority of people of color. Salinas, however, admits it may not get far in the heavily Republican and heavily gerrymandered state legislature.

The Department of Homeland Security is claiming that its attacks on the streets of Minneapolis are its “biggest ever immigration enforcement operation” and brushes off the murder of Good as an “act of self-defense” by a driver who “weaponized her vehicle to attack officers.” With multiple videos possibly disputing that narrative, the Trump administration has declared that only the FBI control is allowed to investigate, with all local authorities frozen out of the probe.

People on the streets in Minneapolis see things as being vastly different from what the Trump administration is claiming. Protester Connor Maloney told AP that he was demonstrating to support his community because he is angry about what ICE is doing. “Almost daily I see them harassing people,” he said. “It’s just sickening that this is happening all around us.”

The protesters in Minneapolis are contending with subfreezing temperatures, accumulated snow and ice, and some were seen some carrying signs saying “De-ICE Minnesota” and “ICE melts in Minnesota.”

The huge protests in Minnesota did not stop ICE from continuing its harassment of people in the city, however. An AP photographer witnessed, a few miles from where protests were going on, a group of heavily armed ICE agents approach a person they said was following them. Two agents pulled out long guns and pointed them at him and ordered him to stop following them. They said, “This is your first and final warning.” They drove off after that.

At another location in the area, the AP reported that agents pointed their fingers at journalists and warned them to stay away, as they detained someone coming out of a home improvement store.

Elected officials are also not left off the list of people mistreated by ICE. Three House members from the state of Minnesota made an attempt to tour the ICE headquarters in the state’s federal building. Ten minutes after entering, they were forced to leave, they told viewers on MS-NOW Sunday.

Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kell Morrison, and Angie Craig were the three denied their right to inspect the facility. They were told there is a “new policy” requiring lawmakers to give seven-day notice if they wish to inspect an immigration facility. That “policy” is a violation of the law that allows members of Congress to conduct their oversight responsibility at any time.

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Hrm

I wonder if this will be a repeat of 2020.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10312215

Worth subscribing to.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — On a visit to New Zealand, FBI Director Kash Patel gave the country’s police and spy bosses gifts of inoperable pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws and had to be destroyed, New Zealand law enforcement agencies told The Associated Press.

The plastic 3D-printed replica pistols formed part of display stands Patel presented to at least four senior New Zealand security officials in July. Patel, the most senior Trump administration official to visit the country so far, was in Wellington to open the FBI’s first standalone office in New Zealand.

Pistols are tightly restricted weapons under New Zealand law and possessing one requires an additional permit beyond a regular gun license. Law enforcement agencies didn’t specify whether the officials who met with Patel held such permits, but they couldn’t have legally kept the gifts if they didn’t.

It wasn’t clear what permissions Patel had sought to bring the weapons into the country. A spokesperson for Patel told the AP Tuesday that the FBI would not comment.

US FBI Director Kash Patel visits New Zealand, immediately provides local officials with 3d printed, potentially operable firearms...

... which is a crime, that could carry up to a 3 year prison/jail sentence in NZ...

... and would also potentially be somewhere between a misdemeanor and a felony depending on where you are in the US, as 3d printed firearms are generally without serial numbers and are thus 'ghost guns', which are often illegal if unregistered, if not outright banned, though this differs from state to state and city to city.

(Oh also, I guess he is so concerned about properly investigating the death of Charlie Kirk that he is uh, personally looking for leads in New Zealand, or something.)

I used to like Reddit, but I've realized that people are just giving their input/knowledge away so that Reddit can sell it. It is sad to lose Reddit as a helpful resource, but seriously, people should stop contributing to it.