MicroWave

“They are like blind kittens,” a Ukrainian General Staff commander tells POLITICO.

Two days after Elon Musk's SpaceX launched Starlink verification and blocked unverified terminals in Ukraine, the pace of Russia's offensive appears to be slowing, a Ukrainian military official told POLITICO.

“Currently, such a trend is indeed observed. But it will be necessary to monitor further whether it will continue, whether there will be other factors,” said the official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“However, at some places, Ukrainian military Starlinks which have not been registered yet have also been disconnected. But the registration process is ongoing,” the official added.

It would be "impossible" to move 40% of Taiwan's semiconductor capacity to the U.S., the island's top tariff negotiator said, pushing back against recent comments by American officials who called for a major production shift.

In an interview with Taiwanese television channel CTS that was broadcast late on Sunday, Taiwan Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun said she had made it clear to Washington that Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem, built up over decades, could not be relocated.

"I have made it very clear to the United States that this is impossible," she said, referring to the 40% goal the U.S. has floated.

That ecosystem will continue to grow in Taiwan, Cheng said, adding that the semiconductor industry would keep investing at home.

Funding cuts to a key federal agency have left secretaries of states scrambling to fill in the gaps to ensure the election process is secure.

Funding for threat monitoring through the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a DHS-funded nonprofit agency, was cut because it “no longer supports Department priorities,” according to a letter DHS sent to the center last year, which was obtained by NBC News.

“The fact that they’ve actually dismantled and defunded the very real, tried and true infrastructure that was in place in 2020 to protect our elections against foreign interference, that speaks for itself about where their focus really is,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is running for governor. “State officials are all we have left in terms of guardrails over all these processes.”

Need for greater military autonomy also accepted, says report for Munich Security Conference, which takes place this week

Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.

The report sets the scene for an all-out ideological confrontation with the Trump White House at the high-level annual meeting of security policy specialists, which starts on Friday.

In a now infamous speech to last year’s MSC, the US vice-president, JD Vance, claimed European elites were suppressing free speech and “opening the floodgates” to mass migration. The address marked the moment Europe realised the Trump administration would no longer be a reliable trading and security partner.

Ian Michael Elliott of neofascist Patriot Front worked ‘crisis relief missions’ funded by Department of Agriculture

A federal security contractor that has been awarded millions of dollars by the Department of Agriculture hired a prominent white nationalist leader to work on its patrols last year.

Ian Michael Elliott, a longstanding senior figure in the neofascist group Patriot Front, was part of “crisis relief missions” undertaken on the US west coast by Knight Division Tactical, according to an image shared on LinkedIn in September by one of the company’s executives.

Elliott is shown posing alongside other people as he helps hold up a flag with the contractor’s logo on it. “Stellar company, sharp agents, quality work!” he would later write, in a five-star review posted on Knight Division Tactical’s Google Maps page.

Exclusive: António Guterres says world’s accounting systems should place true value on the environment

The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.

“We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.”

For decades, politicians and policymakers have prioritised growth – as measured by GDP – as the overarching economic goal.

Iran sentenced Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to over seven more years in prison after she began a hunger strike, supporters said Sunday, as Tehran cracks down on all dissent following nationwide protests and the deaths of thousands at the hands of security forces.

The new convictions against Mohammadi come as Iran tries to negotiate with the United States over its nuclear program to avert a threatened military strike by US President Donald Trump. Iran’s top diplomat insisted Sunday that Tehran’s strength came from its ability to “say no to the great powers,” striking a maximalist position just after negotiations in Oman with the US.

Mohammadi’s supporters cited her lawyer, who spoke to Mohammadi. The lawyer, Mostafa Nili, confirmed the sentence on X, saying it had been handed down Saturday by a Revolutionary Court in the city of Mashhad. Such courts typically issue verdicts with little or no opportunity for defendants to contest their charges.

Veteran center-left politician Antonio Jose Seguro has won 66% of the vote, seeing off a challenge from the far-right.

The media tycoon, who was first arrested in 2020, could face life in prison in blow for press freedom following conviction in December

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy figure, is set to be sentenced on Monday in the financial hub’s most high-profile national security case, amid growing calls to free the longstanding critic of the Chinese Communist party whose health is frail.

The sentence comes after a legal saga spanning almost five years for the founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper after he was convicted in December of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials. He was first arrested in 2020.

Sentencing guidelines under the national security law stipulate that Lai, who was deemed a “mastermind” of a conspiracy to engage with foreign activists, politicians and others to solicit foreign sanctions against Hong Kong and China, could come under the most severe penalty “band” of 10 years to life imprisonment for offences of a “grave nature”.

Top House Democrat says president’s suggestion for Republicans to ‘take over’ elections really means ‘steal it’

Democrats will stop Donald Trump from trying to steal this year’s midterm elections, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives said on Sunday.

Jeffries’ comments come amid widespread concern after Trump said Republicans should “take over the voting”. The US constitution gives states the power to set election rules and says Congress can pass laws to set requirements for federal elections. The constitution gives the president no authority over how elections are run.

“What Donald Trump wants to do is try and nationalize the election – translation: steal it. And we’re not going to let it happen,” Jeffries said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. He added that Democrats so far had successfully blocked Trump’s efforts to federalize the national guard countered a nationwide push by Republicans to redraw congressional district boundaries to their advantage.

Health official’s endorsement comes as South Carolina faces hundreds of cases and US risks losing elimination status

A senior US public health official called on Americans to get vaccinated against measles as outbreaks continue in multiple states and concerns grow that the country could lose its measles elimination designation. Dr Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, spoke in support on Sunday of the measles vaccine.

“Take the vaccine, please,” said Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “We have a solution for our problem.”

“Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”

His boss, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, has a long history of questioning both the safety and necessity of vaccines.

In an email to Trump biographer Michael Wolff, the late sex offender wrote that the president "did not recognize old friends"

Nearly a decade ago, Jeffrey Epstein claimed that "some" were worried Donald Trump may be suffering from dementia after he allegedly failed to recognize longtime friends.

Epstein shared his concern in an email sent to journalist and Trump biographer Michael Wolff on Dec. 29, 2017, which was released by the Department of Justice along with millions of other files from the investigations into the late financier and convicted sex offender.

In the email to the Landslide author, which was sent during Donald’s first term as president of the United States, Epstein wrote: "Some at dinner with donald last night, were concerned about dementia. tons of makeup. did not recognize old friends.”