Joanne Stocker

"It is a historic opportunity to shift the balance of power between Europe and Russia by exposing the Kremlin’s financial frailty and altering Vladimir Putin’s calculus about war and peace [and] a chance to speed up Europe’s efforts to establish its military and financial independence from America."

Our cover this week

“Europe should take heart and recognise its own strength. Its military budget is already four times larger than Russia’s; its economy is ten times larger. Far from shying away from a financial contest with the Kremlin, Europe should embrace it—and win the war”

What a legend

Poor Creature are just fabulous. I'll check out OXN though

Folk-techno is going to save me, I just know it

YouTube video by LankumDublin Lankum - Ghost Town (Official Video)

OK lads, the new @lankumdublin.bsky.social is about to drop and I can not prepare you adequately for Lankum doing techno, you have been warned:

youtu.be/aLLnF4vxaeY?...

This is my new favourite story and I love Lankum so much

Yet, I should say. Hopefully soon

Thank you for asking. It's an ongoing work product, so I don't have anything publicly available.

One of the Bulgarian men says they were meant to put up stickers around Bürgenstock during a high-level Ukraine summit in June 2024, but claims they didn't do it.

One of the men accused in the Eiffel Tower incident is Ukrainian, and another is German.

Last year investigators were looking into whether another Paris incident, where coffins with the words "French soldiers in Ukraine" were laid near the Eiffel Tower, was connected to the Holocaust memorial defacement. Now prosecutors say the group may have defaced a memorial to Bandera in Munich.

For goodness sake, I missed this one yesterday for ~reasons~: 4 Bulgarians are now on trial in France after defacing the Holocaust Memorial in Paris with red hand graffiti last year. The prosecutor's office says they travelled to Germany and Switzerland and may have tagged other memorials there.

Three more men, including an Armenian (first I've heard of an Armenian involved in these plots) will go on trial in Frankfurt in December on espionage charges. They were indicted earlier this year for spying on a former Ukrainian soldier in connection with a possible assassination plot.

Schmidt was also found guilty of of membership in the self-declared DPR and was accused of fighting in occupied Ukraine in 2014-16. The Alexes were sentenced for supporting his activities, after claiming earlier they had been joking and "acting ironically" according to German media reports.

Today a Munich court sentenced German-Russian citizen Dieter Schmidt to six years in prison and Alexander J and Alex D to suspended sentences in connection with a Russian sabotage plot that included scouting a US base in Bavaria and taking photos of military equipment to Russian intelligence.

a close up of a man with a beard wearing a red shirt and smiling . ALT: a close up of a man with a beard wearing a red shirt and smiling .

Me when she’s about to name that outdoor shop that opened in New York in 1892

Gear: Chapter 2 The field jacket

Absolutely obsessed with the level of pettiness of this man @trufelman.bsky.social interviewed for 14 hours about military kit articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/gear-chapt...

Red Cross says its staff in Gaza "were not able to intervene" as alleged Hamas members buried and uncovered Israeli hostage remains The Red Cross said its staff in Gaza "were not able to intervene directly on-site" as alleged Hamas members were seen burying and then uncovering the remains of a deceased hostage.

Red Cross says its staff in Gaza "were not able to intervene" as alleged Hamas members buried and uncovered Israeli hostage remains www.cbsnews.com/news/red-cro...

Why Wikipedia editors have deleted entries from the “List of unusual deaths”: “hippos are extremely dangerous and very aggressive and there is nothing unusual about hippos killing people” “the man was working on the toilet, making his death inherently less strange than if he had been using it” “no longer an unusual or unique occurrence” regarding impalement by beach umbrella “being hit by multiple motorcycles in a race is not an unusual death” “fatalities involving objects or animals being launched into oncoming traffic are considered commonplace” regarding a Canadian couple’s fatal collision with a “flying bear”

recently discovered that wikipedia volunteers have a hilariously high bar for what constitutes "unusual death"

Zambia to be come the latest country with a fake ship registry website.

How do we know this is fraudulent? There are a few clear signs, and I will go though them below.

One of their ships took down a drone last year but I'm not sure it was ever confirmed who operated it

On Friday Poland's prosecutor's office reported that a Warsaw court sentenced 3 Ukrainian men who are part of a much larger group involved in the Vilnius IKEA and Marywilska fires, as well as an OBI fire in Warsaw in 2024 and plans to torch an IKEA in Riga.

Saab ready to open plant in Ukraine for Gripen fighter jets Kyiv agrees to buy up to 150 aircraft from the Swedish defence company

Saab says it's ready to open an assembly plant in Ukraine as part of the deal for Kyiv to buy 150 Gripen fighter jets www.ft.com/content/9ab0...

In Medill’s latest State of Local News report, a “festering, 20-year-old problem” looms larger than ever “Digital news sites don’t come close to replacing the number of newspapers and journalism jobs being lost. And the digital news providers are almost entirely concentrated in metro areas, leaving vast…

“Digital news sites don’t come close to replacing the number of newspapers and journalism jobs being lost.” www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/in-m...

I think I’ve seen this film before

Oh this is fascinating

The other side of these operations is the old Russian classic: inciting hatred. Excellent reporting by @naomiohreally.bsky.social on how some plots are targeting Jewish and Muslim communities across Europe bsky.app/profile/naom...

I love Ireland so much

Three arrested in London under the National Security Act Three men aged 48, 45 and 44, were arrested at addresses in west and central London

They are Russia-related. The three men are accused of helping Russian intelligence. news.met.police.uk/news/three-a...

Three arrests in London today. The Met Counter Terrorism Policing head said: "We’re seeing an increasing number of who we would describe as 'proxies' being recruited by foreign intelligence services and these arrests are directly related to our ongoing to efforts to disrupt this type of activity"