The Ukrainian drone that ignited a blaze at the Zaporozhye NPP contained an accelerant, according to the facility's director

The Ukrainian drone that caused a blaze inside one of the cooling towers of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) appears to have carried a special incendiary liquid intended to spread fire more rapidly, the facility's director, Yury Chernichuk, has claimed.

The cooling towers, which perform the important function of removing excess heat from nuclear reactors, came under attack on Sunday evening. The fire did not compromise the structural integrity of the massive concrete construction, which is over a 100m tall, but certain plastic elements inside were destroyed, Chernichuk told journalists on Monday.

The drone, he said, "entered the tower from above and detonated." Judging by how fast the fire spread, the official presumes that it carried something such as petroleum or napalm. "The fire spread very fast over a large area," he added.

Russia's Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said Monday that developing artificial intelligence, robots and drones is crucial for ensuring Moscow's victory in its ongoing confrontation with the West.

Referring to the invasion of Ukraine as an "armed confrontation between Russia and the collective West," Belousov outlined four "simultaneous conditions for success in modern military conflicts."

In addition to advanced weaponry and personnel training, Belousov emphasized the importance of an effective system of management that leverages "an advanced technological framework, including artificial intelligence," as well as "new tactical methods of warfare" that incorporate drones and robotic systems.

Explosions were heard before a fire broke out at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as both sides accused the other of starting the fire. No radiation leaks were reported.

Update (Monday):

The geopolitical environment in Eastern Europe and the Middle East is quickly heating up, with Ukraine at the center of attention on Sunday evening. Europe can breathe a major sigh of relief after an alleged drone strike on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been reported as having 'no impact' on nuclear safety.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency wrote on X, "IAEA experts witnessed strong dark smoke coming from ZNPP's northern area following multiple explosions heard in the evening," adding, "Team was told by ZNPP of an alleged drone attack today on one of the cooling towers located at the site. No impact has been reported for nuclear safety."

Labour will end the use of large military sites to house asylum seekers and will instead 'scatter' migrants around the country, it has emerged.

Both RAF Wethersfield and RAF Scampton were among sites identified for housing hundreds of asylum seekers each under the previous Tory government.

It formed part of former prime minister Rishi Sunak's efforts to reduce the cost of housing migrants in hotels.

But Labour is seeking to 'massively increase' the procurement of 'dispersed accommodation' amid concerns about the pressures placed on local services by large-scale sites.

According to The Times, this will include empty homes or former student blocks that have self-catering facilities.

DNC's selection of Harris as the party candidate is proof positive that they plan on cheating and stealing another election. Will the American voters shrug again?
The "special relationship" between United States and Britain seems to be turning American democracy into something that increasingly resembles its former colonizer. The metamorphosis has been so slow and gradual that it's been difficult to recognize it for what it is.

Somehow, in 2024, a very unpopular Democratic party candidate who could not pass his own party's primary elections without industrial-scale rigging, ended up as the nation's president. Supposedly, he won the largest number of popular votes ever obtained by any candidate.

Not everyone is convinced that this is what actually happened. The party itself twice cheated their most popular candidate in the primaries: the pied piper of the American working class, turncoat Bernie Sanders. This year, the party boldly skipped the primaries altogether, anointing the staggeringly inept and even more unpopular Kamala Harris as the party's candidate. So far, all this has elicited waves of shrugs and feeble protests from much of the voting public.

The obvious question is, why. Why would they choose such a dismal candidate as Harris, unless they were planning to cheat again and steal the 2024 elections? Evidence that they are already doing so is already piling up. Fake polls show Kamala is as popular as Trump, and a few bizarre videos and photos of her political rallies emerged over the recent days. They seem a tad inauthentic:

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks on Tuesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is visiting Russia, state news agency TASS reported.

Abbas arrived in Russia on Monday to discuss the Gaza war with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Palestinian envoy said.

Russia's state-run TASS news agency cited the Palestinian ambassador in Moscow as saying Abbas will arrive on Monday and meet Putin on Tuesday.

Sources say inspector general about to release heavily redacted report showing it warned Secret Service about security deficiencies back in April.

After a gunman shot up the White House a decade ago, exposing vulnerabilities at one of America's iconic landmarks, lawmakers in Congress got an unexpected second dose of bad news.

"The Secret Service did not identify best practices and lessons learned from the 2011 White House shooting incident," the Homeland Security Department inspector general wrote in a stinging 2016 report that warned that an agency with a zero failure mission failed to learn from one of its high-profile setbacks.

Now eight years later, with the Secret Service once again reeling from a spectacular failure, the same watchdog office is about to drop a fresh bombshell certain to impact the investigation into the near assassination of former President Donald Trump.

The Russian president has condemned Ukraine's indiscriminate strikes and attempts to target nuclear power facilities amid the Kursk incursion

Any peace talks with Ukraine are impossible as long as it conducts strikes on civilian populations and threatens nuclear power plants, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking at a meeting with senior officials on Monday, Putin addressed Ukraine's recent incursion into the border region of Kursk, as well as a drone strike that damaged Russia's Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

He suggested that Ukraine's most recent actions show why it has refused to revisit plans to settle the conflict based on either on a Russian proposal, or roadmaps presented by neutral parties.

The exclusive report in today's Economic Times carrying Sheikh Hasina's first remarks after her ouster from power will come as a slap on the face of the nincompoops in our country who are waxing eloquently about developments in that country as a stand-alone democracy moment in regional politics.

Hasina told ET, "I resigned, so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it, I resigned from premiership. I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal. I beseech to the people of my land, 'Please do not allow to be manipulated by radicals.'"

The ET report citing Awami League sources implied that the hatchet man of the colour revolution in Bangladesh is none other than Donald Lu, the incumbent Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs who visited Dhaka in May.

This is credible enough. A background check on Lu's string of postings gives away the story. This Chinese -American 'diplomat' served as political officer in Peshawar (1992 to 1994); special assistant to Ambassador Frank Wisner (whose family lineage as operatives of the Deep State is far too well-known to be explained) in Delhi (1996-1997); subsequently, as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Delhi from 1997-2000 (during which his portfolio included Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations), inheriting the job, curiously enough, from Robin Raphel, whose reputation as India's bête noire is still living memory — CIA analyst, lobbyist, and 'expert' on Pakistan affairs.

Indeed, Lu visited Bangladesh in mid-May and met with senior government officials and civil society leaders. And shortly after his visit, the US announced sanctions against then Bangladesh army chief General Aziz Ahmed for what Washington termed his involvement in "significant corruption."

After his Dhaka visit, Lu told Voice of America openly, "Promoting democracy and human rights in Bangladesh remains a priority for us. We will continue to support the important work of civil society and journalists and to advocate for democratic processes and institutions in Bangladesh, as we do in countries around the world...

"We [US] were outspoken in our condemnation of the violence that marred the election cycle [in January] and we have urged the government of Bangladesh to credibly investigate incidents of violence and hold perpetrators accountable. We will continue to engage on these issues..."

Lu played a similar proactive role during his past assignment in Kyrgyzstan (2003-2006) which culminated a colour revolution. Lu specialised in fuelling and masterminding colour revolutions, which led to regime changes in Albania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan (ouster of Imran Khan).

Humankind possesses a peculiar skill in transforming its highest ideals into something very akin to their opposites. The world's various religious traditions transformed their typically messianic and universalist beliefs into particularistic grandiose ambitions, counterposed to the message of universal love those religions originally professed and then sought to propagate. Christianity merged with Roman imperialism, expansionism, and colonialism, and so the Vatican would develop a veritable state apparatus, foreign policy, and expansionist aims. Islamic imperialism imitated Christianity's global mission and its militarized methods. The Catholic Church pursued revanchist Crusades in order to not just recover Christian lands from the Muslims but to expand Catholicism against its breakaway Eastern Church and its Orthodox successors in eastern Europe, most notably the Russian Orthodox Church. This is because the admirable tenets of these faiths, in humankind's imperfect hands, evolved over time into absolutist ideas that brooked no alternatives, the latter of which came to be seen as ultimate evils that had to be expunged from human existence in order for the promise of religion X to be fulfilled as its god, it was argued, insisted. Absolutism became the hallmark of the faith itself, disallowing any variations, deviations, pluralities within. Moreover, variations, deviations, and plurality outside religion X came to be regarded as a threat to it, and had to be expunged to save God's plan, message, and fulfillment on Earth. Absolutism's presence had to be absolute, ubiquitous.