Disclosure of the findings comes as Trump appeared to play down the Russian claim of an attempted attack
U.S. national-security officials said Wednesday that Ukraine didn't target Russian President Vladimir Putin or one of his residences in an alleged drone operation, challenging Moscow's assertion that Kyiv sought to kill the Russian leader.

That conclusion is supported by a Central Intelligence Agency assessment that found no attempted attack against Putin had occurred, according to a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence. The CIA declined to comment.

The U.S. found that Ukraine had been seeking to strike a military target located in the same region as Putin's country residence but not close by, the official said.

President Trump on Wednesday appeared to play down the Russian claim of an attempted drone attack, posting a link to a New York Post editorial that asserted that the Ukraine strike likely didn't occur and sharing the headline: "Putin 'attack' bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace."

Trump's post came after CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed the president on the issue, according to a person familiar with the exchange. U.S. intelligence has a number of ways to monitor Russia's airspace, military activities and attacks on its territory, including with satellites, radar, and communication intercepts.

Trump told reporters on Monday that he was "very angry" after Putin told him in a phone conversation that Ukrainian drones had targeted his residence, known as Dolgiye Borody, or Long Beards, along a lake shore in the country's northwest.

Asked if the U.S. had evidence that such an attack had taken place, Trump replied: "You are saying, maybe the attack didn't take place — that is possible too, I guess, but President Putin told me this morning it did."

In the shadowed theatre of contemporary European politics, where spectacle often substitutes for substance and moral posturing masks a vacuum of principle, the figure of Colonel Jacques Baud emerges not as a rabble-rouser, but as a profound and unsettling reflection. A former Swiss strategic intelligence officer, NATO planner, and United Nations peacekeeping expert, Baud is the antithesis of the caricatured dissident. His method is not the megaphone but the microscope; his weapon, not rhetoric, but evidence; his arena, not the public square, but the dispassionate realm of analysis.

Yet, for committing the most subversive act possible in our era — the insistence on thinking clearly and speaking truthfully about war, power, and the West's complicities — he has been systematically hounded, professionally ostracized, and publicly vilified. The persecution of Jacques Baud is not an anomaly; it is the diagnostic symptom of a Europe that has tragically confused democracy with docility, freedom with fealty to consensus, and its own enlightened values with a rigid, pusillanimous conformity. In an age that demands heroes of conviction over heroes of conquest, Baud stands as a necessary one, a man persecuted precisely for embodying the intellectual rigour Europe claims to revere.

On Monday, Donald Trump reaffirmed his support for another strike on Iran after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But analysts say Netanyahu's designs go far beyond Iran.

In comments to reporters after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump reiterated his support for another strike on Iran.

"I hope they're not trying to build up again, because if they are, we're going to have no choice but very quickly, to eradicate that build up," said Trump, referring to the alleged expansion of Iran's ballistic missile program.

"We'll knock them down," he added. "We'll knock the hell out of them."

Netanyahu has consistently pushed for a wider war on Iran, and was expected to make the case for further attacks during his Mar-a-Lago visit.

Trump's comments prompted an immediate response from Iranian officials.

The idea of security in the context of the international political order is undergoing marked change; many of these changes, however, are negative in nature.

The idea of security, in the conventional sense of the term, is taken to mean the preservation of one's life and belongings. The English philosopher John Locke considered security to be the combination of three key ideas — life, liberty, and property. This conception was more applicable to the individual life. At the level of the nation-states, security can be classified into two categories — traditional and non-traditional.

Traditional security means ensuring the protection of territorial sovereignty integrity and the protection of the lives and livelihood of citizens. The traditional idea of security is the outcome of what the late political scientist Joseph Nye calls 'hard power' — a combination of military, economic and diplomatic power which is wielded to enhance the martial power profile of a state.

The United States and the United Nations signaled a major shift in how American taxpayer dollars will flow to global humanitarian efforts on Monday, signing a landmark agreement that officials say will prioritize efficiency over bureaucracy.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the U.S. Department of State and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), launches what is being called a "Humanitarian Reset." The deal fundamentally changes the mechanism of U.S. funding, moving away from individual project grants toward consolidated "pooled fund vehicles."

According to the State Department, the United States will pledge an initial $2 billion "anchor commitment" for 2026. While the contribution aims to support tens of millions of people facing hunger and war, the administration framed the agreement as a necessary corrective to a UN system it views as bloated and ideologically drifted.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

Francis Bacon

NAPOLI and PALERMO - Criss-crossing Italy, from Friuli and Piemonte to Tuscany, Umbria, Rome and the south - Napoli and Sicily - one cannot shake off that nagging feeling of a stunning anthropological/cultural blindness taking over what is and remains, without a doubt, the definitive civilization-state of the whole West (no competition).

How would Godard, if he was still alive, film this malaise, permeating Fritz Lang's reinterpretation of Homer's Odyssey at the Vila Malaparte in Capri, but without Brigitte Bardot's lethal beauty? Alas, all of that is just memories - fragments shored against our ruins, to quote T.S.Eliot.

The stage in ruins, today, certainly has nothing Homeric about it, featuring the West, a puny ghost with an inflated chest, wallowing in its own irrelevance, superficiality, social fragmentation, absence of Spirit and absence of Logos, boosting its obsession for a Forever War, a tragedy treated like it was a child's game, and not as what it really is: an abyss. No wonder Poseidon couldn't care less about these stupid mortals.

In conversations with my Italian hosts, friends and new acquaintances, the cowardice and absence of political acumen among the "ruling" European classes was rendered crystal clear, along with their lack of courage to understand the rise of a new multipolar century (the title of my latest book, Il Secolo Multipolare, published in Italy earlier this month).

This artificial "Europe" wants by all means to keep an exhausted - politically and economically - paradigm, an archaic, anachronistic status quo that is forcing it to clam up, an empty shell, with extremely destructive consequences.

The blinding beauty of the Costa Esmeralda, between Amalfi and Ravello, barely disguises the fact that what prevails across the EU spectrum is a physical and metaphysical void, because the West has killed everything - even Beauty - and replaced it with Nothing. Nihilism Reigns.

Yet it's a shallow Eurocentrism to believe that the Chaos prevailing in this little Western peninsula of Eurasia is convulsing the world. Eurasia - and East Asia - are living to the full in an extra dimension of optimism and cultural affirmation.

In the future, Europe may eventually adhere to paradigms from other cultures and in spite of itself even absorb them in a syncretism of acceptance. Just like Europe imposed on the whole Global Majority its paradigms and "values" since the middle of the 18th century.

Mass protests have erupted across Iran calling for "death to the dictator" over the regime's economic crisis.

Tear gas was used to disperse protesters as shops shuttered in Tehran's Grand Bazaar and main markets.

University students called on their peers to join the demonstrations, while chants echoed from rooftops in several cities and the Iranian rial plunged to record lows, all against the backdrop of ongoing threats from Israel and the US.

Residents in one city near Tehran told The Telegraph that a heavy presence of armed motorcycle-mounted security forces was visible around midnight.

On Monday, security forces fired tear gas to disperse protesters in Tehran while residents in Malard, 28 miles east of the capital, were faced with motorcycle-mounted armed security.

In several cities, people went on to their rooftops and chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic and Ali Khamenei, its supreme leader.

The protests have been cheered on by Israel, whose foreign ministry hoping for Mr Khamenei's overthrow welcomed the action with "open arms".

The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country.

The drone strike, the details of which have not been previously reported, targeted a remote dock on the Venezuelan coast that the US government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for shipping, the sources said. No one was present at the facility at the time it was struck, so there were no casualties, according to the sources.

Two sources said US Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support to the operation, underscoring their continued involvement in the region. But Col. Allie Weiskopf, a spokesperson for US Special Operations Command, denied that, saying, "Special Operations did not support this operation to include intel support."

President Donald Trump appeared to first acknowledge the attack in an interview last week that initially attracted little notice, though he offered few specifics, including when reporters asked directly about it on Monday.

From Jeff Bezos to Michael Jordan, these are the billionaire superyacht owners currently anchored in St. Barts and the surrounding Caribbean islands for New Year's Eve.

The Caribbean is already buzzing as the annual superyacht showdown kicks into high gear. The world's wealthiest players, along with a steady stream of celebrities and friends, are cruising into Gustavia, St. Maarten, Antigua and the surrounding islands, turning the region into a floating playground of excess. Many stayed through Christmas, hopping between islands during the day before closing out the holidays with the famous New Year's Eve fireworks over Fort Oscar in St. Barts.

They arrive in dramatic fashion: private jets, helicopters and massive superyachts gliding into port. Once the sun goes down, Gustavia Harbor becomes a red carpet of floating mansions, illuminated against the Caribbean night.

Around St. Barts, most guests head ashore by tender for invite-only parties, while others keep things low-key with private celebrations onboard. On land, ultra-pricey villas with renowned concierge teams handle everything from impossible dinner reservations to last-minute party access.

China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing's ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict, as U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the threat behind the drills.

The Eastern Theatre Command said it had deployed troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its "Justice Mission 2025" exercises to encircle the democratically governed island, conduct live fire and simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade Taiwan's main ports.

The live-firing exercises will continue on Tuesday across a record seven zones designated by China's Maritime Safety Administration, making the drills the largest to date by total coverage and in areas closer to Taiwan than previous exercises. The military had initially said artillery firing would be confined to five zones.

Drills force flight cancellations

Taiwan's Defence Ministry said there was also an extra zone for a two-hour drill on Monday morning, which took place without a Chinese announcement in the eastern waters of the island.

The Transport Ministry said more than 100,000 passengers on scheduled international flights will be affected by Tuesday's drills, while around 80 domestic flights are set to be cancelled.