Russia's FSB security service said on Monday it had thwarted a Ukrainian assassination attempt on Mr Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, arresting an agent before he was able to blow up Mr Aksyonov's car.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Russian media have reported that security has been stepped up in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and that additional checks are being made on crossings from Russia's southern Krasnodar region into Crimea.

The FSB said in a statement that it had arrested a Russian national recruited by Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency who had undergone explosives, reconnaissance and sabotage training in Ukraine.

His plan, it said, had been to blow up Mr Aksyonov's car, but he had been detained as he tried to retrieve an explosive device from a hiding place. Footage broadcast on state TV showed masked FSB operatives detaining a man in a tracksuit as he walked into a wooded area. A green sack was shown containing what were described as elements of an explosive device.

The detainee was then shown with his face blurred out confessing that he was a Ukrainian agent and had planned to place the explosives in a car parked on the route used by Mr Aksyonov's cortege in the city of Simferopol.

The congresswoman says Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch lied under oath to Congress about their views on Roe...

Political pressure is mounting on Joe Biden to take more action to protect abortion rights across the US as firebrand New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for supreme court justices to be impeached for misleading statements about their views on Roe v Wade.

Ocasio-Cortez's remarks took aim at justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Both were appointed by former president Donald Trump and had signaled that they would not reverse the supreme court's landmark 1973 decision in Roe v Wade during confirmation hearings as well as in meetings with senators.

On Friday, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch formed part of the conservative majority which in effect ended legal access to abortion in most states, and Ocasio-Cortez said "there must be consequences" for that.

Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill into law on Friday that will allow illegal immigrants to acquire standard driver's licenses.

House Bill 3882, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will allow illegal immigrants to use driver's licenses as official identification documents but do not qualify for Real ID travel purposes.

Pritzker said:

"This legislation is a significant step in eliminating the barriers to opportunity that many undocumented immigrants face. We're ensuring every eligible individual can obtain a driver's license, making our roads safer, decreasing stigma, and creating more equitable systems for all."

Democratic Lt. Governor Julia Stratton commented:

"Providing access to a standard Illinois Driver's License for our undocumented immigrants is about breaking down barriers that lead to discrimination."

Currently, illegal immigrants in the state can obtain a Temporary Visitor Driver's License, which bears the acronym "TVDL" at the top.

The grandmother of a French-Algerian teenager slain by police has pleaded with rioters to stop their spree of looting and destruction. Meanwhile, the country has braced itself for a sixth straight night of anarchy.

The woman, identified as 'Nadia', said in a phone interview with BFMTV on Sunday:

"I say to the people who are breaking things: stop. Don't break windows, don't smash up schools, don't smash up buses. Stop it, there are moms on buses, there are moms walking outside."

Nadia condemned the rioters for using the death of her grandson as "an excuse" to break the law, adding that they and the policeman who shot the boy would all face "justice."

France has been gripped by violent protests and riots since Tuesday, after police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre shot and killed a 17-year-old Franco-Algerian boy identified as Nahel M. when he refused to comply at a traffic stop.

Despite the fact that the officer who shot Nahel was swiftly arrested and charged with homicide, the incident triggered a wave of nationwide violence that has since spilled over into Belgium and Switzerland.

Riots have swept through the country following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old, Nahel Merzouk who was shot by police on Tuesday

The home of a Paris suburb mayor was ram-raided and set alight while his wife and children were asleep as violent protests spread into a fifth night across the country.

France has been rocked by riots after 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was shot dead by police on Tuesday.

Vincent Jeanbrun, mayor of the southern suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses, said his wife and one of their two children, aged five and seven, were injured as they fled their home in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The term "color/colour revolution" is often associated with covert efforts among US and European interests to foment civil unrest within enemy nations (and sometimes allied nations) as a means to destabilize their societies and governments. It is essentially 4^th generation warfare, a concept expanded on by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino (a self professed satanist) in a white paper titled 'From Psyop To Mindwar.' The goal is straightforward - To go to war against a foreign country (or one's own country) by attacking the citizenry rather than its armies. Or, to exploit the target population as a weapon to trigger instability.

Color revolutions have been instigated for decades around the world. One such psy-op led to the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 which caused the overthrow of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. This singular event was the primary trigger for the eventual Russian invasion of Ukraine this past year, as Vladimir Putin declared he would no longer tolerate color revolutions among Russian allies.

One can debate the wider implications of that war and who it actually benefits in the long run, but the fact remains that Euromaidan was a NATO supported color revolution that initiated a powderkeg event that brings us closer to world war. If chaos was the purpose, then the purpose has been achieved.

Neocon war is unpopular, ugly, venal. Worst of all, it is unsuccessful - meaning instead of ending in triumph and celebration, it persists as a confusing, contradictory and costly problem multiplier. ...Neocons are the Dylan Mulvaneys of American politics, albeit with less sincerity and self-awareness. — Karen Kwiatkowski

The American Revolution was a long emergency, too. Try to see past the elegant uniforms, the dashing horsemen, and the beautiful, unspoiled country to imagine the darkness of uncertainty those people lived in, trying to go their own way against an implacable, distant authority. This holiday we admire the birth of that new nation, though it has aged into a monster repudiating its finest achievements: liberty and the rule of law. The DC Blob is the new distant, implacable authority, and many of us are not happy with it.

By happenstance lately, out and about, I met up with several old friends and attempted to check-in with where they stood on these matters — how are things going in our country? The phrase our country seemed to make their heads snap back a little and their eyes goggle. Their answer, uniformly, was "Trump, Trump, Trump," issued as a sort of barking. Trump's criminal insults to democracy must be stopped, was the drift.

My next question was: How's "Joe Biden" doing? (They didn't see the quote marks, and I didn't use my fingers to signify.) "He's doing pretty well... accomplished a lot," they said. What'd they make of the developing bribery scandal? "Huh... the what?" Raking in all that money from foreign governments when Joe was Veep, and then after. "Oh... right-wing talking points... baseless...."

This is what my old friends think. Quite a few of them are aware that I write this blog. They don't actually read it; they seem to just hear about it. The old community of Boomer friends thinks I've "gone off the deep end." One thing these encounters taught me is how successful the censorship and propaganda campaign of the Blob has been. These were people, you understand, who came of age believing in free speech, freedom of the press, respecting civil rights, decrying political persecutions, and, most of all, being against hegemonic wars — which, back in the sixties, was called imperialism.

These days they're all for a righteous defense against misinformation that threatens our democracy, meaning: censorship. They wouldn't call it that, exactly. They consider it a battle against right-wing extremism, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, the usual bugbears. It never occurs to them that the Blob lies to them continually, remorselessly, promiscuously about everything.

More and more Germans are swapping meat products for plant-based proteins, according to Germany's Ministry for Agriculture, but not everyone is ready to give them up.

Despite being known for their love of sausages and schnitzel, Germans have been steadily eating less meat over the past few years. "Eating less meat definitely contributes to both the environment and animals. And it is also healthy," said a 28-year-old local government worker at the Vegan Summer Festival in Berlin.


Florian Busmann used to enjoy sausages and steak on the barbecue in the summer, but these days he prefers meat substitutes and grilled vegetables like aubergines and peppers.

Figures from the German Agriculture Ministry show that meat consumption dropped to 52 kilogrammes per person in 2022, the lowest figure since calculations began in 1989.

Germany's far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), achieved another victory as their candidate was elected a full-time mayor, further strengthening the party's position in the country.

The AfD has been experiencing a surge in popularity, reaching record highs in opinion polls. This recent success follows their first district election win just a week ago.

Hannes Loth, a 42-year-old farmer and member of the local parliament, won the mayoral election in Raguhn-Jessnitz, a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, in a run-off against independent candidate Nils Naumann.

A 12-year-old girl's petition to get bathrooms in her school that are segregated by sex has reportedly been taken down by Change, a petition-hosting platform. The petition allegedly had nearly 13,000 signatures when it was taken down by the site.

The petition was made by a Twitter user's daughter in May. The account on Twitter is called, "WomenAreSayingNO!" The user posted a link to the petition page.