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Russia Captures Another Ukrainian Town While Zelensky Still Insists On Altering Trump Peace Plan

Russian forces continue their steady battlefield gains this week, but Kiev is still seeking to grasp at establishing some sort of leverage at the negotiating table, as the Trump peace plan is still being pushed in back-and-forth US dialogue with Moscow representatives. 

Over the past some 24 hours, Russian troops have captured the settlement of Zarechnoye in the southeast Zaporozhye Region, according to the defense ministry (MoD). “Battlegroup East units kept advancing deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlement of Zarechnoye in the Zaporozhye Region,” the MoD said Wednesday according to TASS.

The military further issued a grim figure, claiming that the Ukrainian army lost over 1,400 troops in a single day across all front line areas. Additional armor and combat vehicles were also reportedly destroyed.

After weeks ago Ukraine finally lost the strategic logistics hub of Pokrovsk, it’s been setback after setback for Kiev from there. The pace of Russia’s advance has only steadily increased. Reuters conveys Ukraine’s response, which seeks to frame it as a strategic retreat:

Ukrainian forces have pulled out of the embattled eastern town of Siversk, Kyiv’s military said on Tuesday, as Russian troops wage a battlefield offensive aimed at threatening key cities critical to Ukraine’s defences in the east. Sloviansk is a northern anchor of the so-called “fortress belt” of cities in Ukraine’s heavily industrialised Donbas region, which Russia has demanded Kyiv cede before it ends its war.
“The invaders were able to advance due to a significant numerical advantage and constant pressure from small assault groups in difficult weather conditions,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement.
It said it had withdrawn soldiers to preserve lives and resources, adding that they had, however, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.

And yet, President Volodymyr Zelensky is still pressing for a fresh meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss “sensitive issues” – given Washington and Moscow seem closer than ever to reaching common understanding on the peace deal, after the Miami meetings.

Zelensky has laid out that territorial control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland remains unresolved. The US plan hinges on Ukraine giving up territory, specifically in the east where its forces are clearly on the backfoot.

“We are ready for a meeting with the United States at the leaders’ level to address sensitive issues. Matters such as territorial questions must be discussed at the leaders’ level,” said Zelensky in comments released by his office on Wednesday.

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Officials discover a million more documents potentially related to Epstein case

US authorities have discovered more than a million more documents potentially related to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that they plan to release in the coming days and weeks, officials say.

The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice (DoJ) about the discovery and turned over the documents for lawyers to review.

“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the DoJ said on social media on Wednesday.

The department said that given the volume of material, the process could take “a few more weeks”.

The agency said it would “continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files”.

The statement did not specify how the FBI and New York prosecutors came across the additional material.

The news comes after the justice department released thousands of documents last week – some heavily redacted – related to their investigations into Epstein.

The files were released after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act – signed into law by US President Donald Trump – that ordered the agency to share all the documents with the public while protecting victims’ identities.

Many of the documents released last week had names and other information blacked out, including names of people the FBI appears to cite as possible co-conspirators in the Epstein case.

The justice department has faced criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the amount of redactions, which the law permits only to protect victims’ identities and active criminal investigations.

The law passed by Congress and signed last month by Trump states that names and information that might be embarrassing or cause “reputational harm” are not allowed to be redacted.

It specifically asks the DoJ for internal communications and memos detailing who was investigated and decisions on whether “to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates”.

Included in the first release of documents were emails appearing to be exchanged between FBI personnel in 2019 that mention 10 possible “co-conspirators” of Epstein.

The emails said six of the group had been served with subpoenas. This included three in Florida, one in Boston, one in New York City, and one in Connecticut.

Possible co-conspirators in Epstein’s crimes are a major focus for his victims, and for several lawmakers who have demanded more transparency from the justice department.

Previous releases of Epstein documents have included revelations that reverberated across the Atlantic. Peter Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US after details emerged about his friendship with the convicted paedophile, and that he told Epstein “I think the world of you”, the day before Epstein began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008.

Lord Mandelson said in a letter to staff that “I deeply regret” the circumstances of his departure from the British embassy in Washington DC. He said being ambassador had been “the privilege of my life” and he continued “to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims”.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lost his ‘prince’ title and was asked to leave his Windsor mansion, Royal Lodge, following weeks of intense scrutiny over his links to Epstein following a document release in October.

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Two Centuries of Russophobia & Rejection of Peace

Europe has repeatedly rejected peace with Russia at moments when a negotiated settlement was available, and those rejections have proven profoundly self-defeating.

From the nineteenth century to the present, Russia’s security concerns have been treated not as legitimate interests to be negotiated within a broader European order, but as moral transgressions to be resisted, contained, or overridden.

This pattern has persisted across radically different Russian regimes —Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet — suggesting that the problem lies not primarily in Russian ideology, but in Europe’s enduring refusal to recognize Russia as a legitimate and equal security actor.

My argument is not that Russia has been entirely benign or trustworthy. Rather, it is that Europe has consistently applied double standards in the interpretation of security.

Europe treats its own use of force, alliance-building, and imperial or post-imperial influence as normal and legitimate, while construing comparable Russian behavior — especially near Russia’s own borders — as inherently destabilizing and invalid.

This asymmetry has narrowed diplomatic space, delegitimized compromise, and made war more likely. Likewise, this self-defeating cycle remains the defining characteristic of European-Russian relations in the twenty-first century.

A recurring failure throughout this history has been Europe’s inability — or refusal — to distinguish between Russian aggression and Russian security-seeking behavior. In multiple periods, actions interpreted in Europe as evidence of inherent Russian expansionism were, from Moscow’s perspective, attempts to reduce vulnerability in an environment perceived as increasingly hostile.

Meanwhile, Europe consistently interpreted its own alliance building, military deployments, and institutional expansion as benign and defensive, even when these measures directly reduced Russian strategic depth.

This asymmetry lies at the heart of the security dilemma that has repeatedly escalated into conflict: one side’s defense is treated as legitimate, while the other side’s fear is dismissed as paranoia or bad faith.

Western Russophobia should not be understood primarily as emotional hostility toward Russians or Russian culture. Instead, it operates as a structural prejudice embedded in European security thinking: the assumption that Russia is the exception to normal diplomatic rules.

While other great powers are presumed to have legitimate security interests that must be balanced and accommodated, Russia’s interests are presumed illegitimate unless proven otherwise.

This assumption survives changes in regime, ideology, and leadership. It transforms policy disagreements into moral absolutes and renders compromise as suspect. As a result, Russophobia functions less as a sentiment than as a systemic distortion — one that repeatedly undermines Europe’s own security.

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Pennsylvania High Court Rules Police Can Access Google Searches Without Warrant

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a new definition of “reasonable expectation.” According to the justices, it’s no longer reasonable to assume that what you type into Google is yours to keep.

In a decision that reads like a love letter to the surveillance economy, the court ruled that police were within their rights to access a convicted rapist’s search history without a warrant. The reasoning is that everyone knows they’re being watched anyway.

The opinion, issued Tuesday, leaned on the idea that the public has already surrendered its privacy to Silicon Valley.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

“It is common knowledge that websites, internet-based applications, and internet service providers collect, and then sell, user data,” the court said, as if mass exploitation of personal information had become a civic tradition.

Because that practice is so widely known, the court concluded, users cannot reasonably expect privacy. In other words, if corporations do it first, the government gets a free pass.

The case traces back to a rape and home invasion investigation that had gone cold. In a final effort, police asked Google to identify anyone who searched for the victim’s address the week before the crime. Google obliged. The search came from an IP address linked to John Edward Kurtz, later convicted in the case.

It’s hard to argue with the result; no one’s defending a rapist, but the method drew a line through an already fading concept: digital privacy.

Investigators didn’t start with a suspect; they started with everyone. That’s the quiet power of a “reverse keyword search,” a dragnet that scoops up the thoughts of every user who happens to type a particular phrase.

The justices pointed to Google’s own privacy policy as a kind of consent form. “In the case before us, Google went beyond subtle indicators,” they wrote. “Google expressly informed its users that one should not expect any privacy when using its services.”

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Seth Rich Attorney Ty Clevenger Blasts FBI for “Nine-Year Coverup” — Accuses Bureau of Lying to Courts and Burying Evidence While Ignoring Court Orders

A lawyer closely tied to the long-running legal battle over the mysterious death of Seth Rich is accusing the federal government of an extraordinary, years-long coverup, one that he says mirrors the FBI’s handling of other politically explosive cases and exposes systemic corruption at the highest levels of federal law enforcement.

Ty Clevenger, an attorney who has spent years litigating Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases related to Seth Rich, issued a blistering public statement this week alleging that the FBI deliberately concealed records, lied to federal courts, and is now openly defying a court order to produce documents related to Rich’s case.

Clevenger’s remarks come amid renewed scrutiny of the FBI following revelations that the bureau effectively “buried” the January 6 pipe bomber investigation for years.

According to Clevenger, the FBI has been caught repeatedly lying to federal courts during eight years of FOIA litigation, hiding and misrepresenting records related to Seth Rich “on a massive scale.”

Even more alarming, Clevenger claims the FBI is currently defying a court order to turn over records, prompting a pending motion to hold the bureau in contempt of court.

Clevenger also blasted Republican lawmakers for their silence over the past nine years, naming names.

He pointed out that Rep. Thomas Massie has aggressively pursued the Epstein files but never publicly pressed on Seth Rich. Rep. Barry Loudermilk has led investigations into January 6 but, according to Clevenger, has ignored the Rich case entirely.

He then rattled off a list of prominent Republicans—Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Chuck Grassley, Tim Burchett, and James Comer—asking whether any of them are even aware of what he calls an “ongoing FBI coverup.”

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Colorado Power Outage Makes Official US Time Run Slow

America’s official clock briefly lagged this week, thanks to a windstorm in Colorado and a backup system that didn’t kick in as planned. The nation’s time is maintained at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s lab in Boulder, where 16 atomic clocks feed into what’s known as NIST UTC—official US time as determined by the Commerce Department and the US Navy, per NPR. When severe winds knocked out power to the facility on Wednesday and a backup generator didn’t work, some clocks lost connection to NIST’s measurement and distribution systems, according to supervisory research physicist Jeff Sherman.

The type of NIST-F4 atomic clock used in the Boulder facility “ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today,” the agency notes, per CBS News. The clocks themselves kept running on battery backup after last week’s power outage, which Gizmodo notes lasted about two hours, but the disruption left NIST’s version of coordinated universal time 4.8 microseconds—just under 5 millionths of a second—behind where it should have been, per NPR. For comparison, NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson notes it takes about 350,000 microseconds to blink.

Sherman said whether that tiny lag matters depends on who’s describing it. Most people wouldn’t notice, for instance, but that kind of discrepancy can affect high-precision systems, including telecommunications networks, GPS, and other critical infrastructure, Sherman notes. NIST says “high-end” users also have access to other timekeeping networks and were warned of the disruption. By Saturday evening, power to the facility was back, and crews were assessing damage and working to bring NIST’s clocks back into perfect sync.

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Former Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman’s Murder Is Now Very Suspect After Uncovering the Massive Fraud in Tim Walz’s State

The murder of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband is very suspect since the massive scandal in Minnesota involving the state’s social programs was uncovered. 

It looks like Democrat Melissa Hortman knew she was in big trouble when she was the only Democrat to vote against Tim Walz’s healthcare for illegals bill in Minnesota. She cried as she shared her position and admitted to stepping outside the Democrat initiated corrupt fence. “It’s almost like she knew what would happen next.

The former Minnesota Representative was gunned down with her husband days later.  The DOJ reported the following after they arrested the alleged murderer of Minnesota’s former congresswoman.

Vance Boelter, 57, has been indicted on six federal charges in connection with the stalking and murders of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, the stalking and shooting of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman, and the attempted shooting of their daughter Hope Hoffman, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson.

“Vance Boelter planned and carried out a night of terror that shook Minnesota to its core,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson. “He carried out targeted political assassinations the likes of which have never been seen in Minnesota. We grieve with the Hortman family and continue to pray for the recovery of the Hoffmans. Today, a grand jury indicted Boelter with the most serious of federal charges for these heinous political assassinations. Let me be clear: Boelter will see justice.”

According to court documents, after extensive research and planning, Boelter embarked on a murderous rampage targeting Minnesota’s elected officials and their families. On June 14, 2025, the defendant disguised himself as a member of law enforcement and traveled to the homes of Democratic elected officials with the intent to intimidate and murder. Early that morning, the defendant traveled to the Hoffmans home in Champlin, Minnesota. By posing as a police officer, Boelter compelled the Hoffmans to answer their door. He then repeatedly shot Senator Hoffman and Yvette Hoffman and he attempted to shoot their daughter, Hope Hoffman.

The Gateway Pundit reported that the suspect in the shooting, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was appointed by Walz in 2019 to serve on the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, and he also leads an international security firm.

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Oklahoma University Trans Instructor Fired for Failing Christian Student’s Essay on Gender

University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky, a Christian, received a zero grade from transgender teaching assistant Mel Curth for not upholding a woke narrative for a paper on gender stereotypes.

Initially, the University removed Curth from the classroom. On Monday, they announced that Curth “will no longer have
instructional duties at the University.”

“A student’s claim of religious discrimination on an individual assignment in an online Psychology Course taught by a graduate teaching assistant has come to resolution.”

“As stated previously, the student followed two available processes at the University: the grade appeals process in the college and she made a formal claim of illegal religious discrimination.”

“As already announced, the grade appeal was decided in favor of the student, removing the assignment completely from the student’s total point value of the class, resulting in no academic harm to the student.”

“The claim for discrimination has been investigated and concluded. The University does not release findings from such investigations.”

“At the same time of the investigation, the Provost-the University’s highest ranking academic officer— and the academic Dean reviewed the full facts of the matter.”

“Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper.”

“The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.”

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Indicted ex-aide to Netanyahu says PM backed plan to utilize intel later leaked to Bild

Eli Feldstein, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indicted former spokesperson, alleged on Monday that the premier was aware and supportive of his efforts to make use of classified intelligence in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal, effectively contradicting Netanyahu’s assertion that he had no prior knowledge of Feldstein’s leak of the document to the German Bild tabloid.

Feldstein made the accusation in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster aired Sunday night — his first media appearance since being arrested in October 2024 and later charged for leaking stolen intelligence to Bild the previous month. The publication presented that classified document as evidence that Hamas was not interested in reaching a hostage deal with Israel.

He went on to claim that Netanyahu’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman got wind of the secret investigation into Feldstein’s leak to Bild months before it was publicized and had assured Feldstein then that he’d be able to quash the probe.

Feldstein also told Kan that well before the Bild affair, Netanyahu was hyper-focused on combating media narratives that were critical of his conduct and had directed his aides to limit public chatter about him being “responsible” for Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.

The Bild affair was triggered by the execution of six Israeli hostages at the hands of their Hamas captors, who sensed Israeli troops approaching the tunnel where they were located in the southern Gaza city of Rafah at the end of August 2024.

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Sen. Rand Paul’s 2025 Festivus Report Cites Hundreds of Millions in Taxpayer Waste on Cruel Animal Experiments Exposed by White Coat Waste Project

In his annual Festivus tradition of airing grievances against government waste, Sen. Rand Paul has dropped his 2025 report, slamming billions in reckless spending – including hundreds of millions on barbaric animal tests uncovered by the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project (WCW).

For the seventh straight year, Paul’s report highlights WCW’s investigations into taxpayer-funded cruelty, from drugging beagles to risky gain-of-function research tied to China.

Paul pulls no punches in the report’s introduction: “White Coat Waste helped us uncover hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars funding labs, gain-of-function research, and brutal experiments on dogs, monkeys, and rats. That includes over $13.8 million on beagle experiments, $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a ‘Price Is Right’-inspired video game, and so much more.”

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