August Hanning has claimed that there appears to have been a secret arrangement between Kiev and Warsaw

Poland was likely involved in the underwater explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, the former president of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has claimed. August Hanning also alleged that Warsaw has intentionally obstructed Berlin’s investigation into the incident.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the blasts, which brought an end to the supply of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 and damaged the parallel Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which had never entered operation due to EU bureaucratic setbacks.

In an interview with Die Welt on Thursday, Hanning said: “The way it seems is that it was a Ukrainian team that, as per the findings of the investigation, operated there.” However, he added, “this was of course only possible with support from the land.”

“When we look at the map… pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged here, and I think not only agencies …I think that this was an arrangement between [people] at the top level in Ukraine and in Poland,” the former intelligence chief conjectured.

He alleged that Warsaw might have provided logistical support to the suspected Ukrainian saboteurs.

According to Hanning, “these are decisions that were made at the highest political level. And I think that there was an arrangement between [Ukrainian] President [Vladimir] Zelensky and [Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda to carry out this attack.”

He claimed that Polish authorities let one of the suspects leave the country even though Germany had already reached out to Warsaw, requesting assistance in his capture.

From RT.

It's actually really amazing footage - he totally headbutts the drone and he survives..! He walks away very normally and goes to hide in some trees.

This makes some sense - a high quality helmet can stop a direct .776 bullet to the head one time.

None of the shrapnel in one of these drones likely has that kind of force.

I imagine that he has big wounds from shrapnel on his shoulders, but I really don't know. Who knows, really... It depends on so much and there's just no information.

Truly, amazing footage.

I hope we can get the full story someday.

Thai tourists appear to be acting on the grassroots social media hashtag "Ban Korea," with the boycott campaign appearing to have manifested a travel preference for Japan and China over South Korea.

From the Thai perspective, problems with South Korea's strict immigration checks have festered since last year. After landing in the country, some Thais with electronic preapproval are being turned back by immigration agents, costing the would-be tourists hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

South Korea blames the trouble on illegal workers showing up from Thailand.

"I was rejected by the immigration and was sent back to Bangkok immediately last year," said Eve Khokesuwan, a 42-year-old housekeeper from the northeastern town of Kalasin. As she could not speak fluent English, she had no choice but to obey the Korean authority.

"I don't want to go to Korea anymore because it was the most stressful trip ever. I felt a very bad impression [of South Korea]," she said.

The Thai hashtag began spreading on X in the final quarter of last year. Then, in the first four months of this year the number of Thais visiting South Korea fell 21% from the year-earlier trimester, to 119,000, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.

In 2019, before COVID shut down global travel, 572,000 Thai tourists made it through South Korean immigration.

What a clucking shame.

An Illinois school worker will spend the next nine years in prison after she stole 11,000 cases of chicken wings worth $1.5 million that were meant for students during the height of the COVID pandemic, prosecutors said.

Vera Liddell used her position as the food service director at Harvey School District 152 to carry out the unappetizing crime that was only unearthed after the district realized the school system blew past its budget, prosecutors reportedly said.

Liddell, 68, started the scheme in July 2020 and didn’t stop until February 2022, the Cook County State Attorney’s Office said, according to ABC 7 Chicago.

While she bought up the incredible amount of poultry and used a school cargo van to pick up the food, students never saw a single wing, prosecutors said, per WGN.

Schools were closed, but the district near Chicago was still sending out meal kits to students in remote learning during the height of the pandemic.

She was originally charged with theft and operating a criminal enterprise in January 2023.

It’s an episode in his life that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz points to as the reason he stopped drinking. In 1995, Walz was a 31-year-old high school teacher living in Nebraska when he was pulled over for speeding, failed a sobriety test, and was arrested, according to court documents posted online two years ago by Alpha News, a conservative site based in Minnesota. He later pleaded guilty to reckless driving.

Since that night, Walz has served with the Army National Guard, rising to the rank of command sergeant major, won six Congressional races, and was elected to two terms as Governor of Minnesota. And now, Vice President Kamala Harris has picked him to be her running mate. Soon after Walz’ name emerged on Harris’ shortlist, supporters of former President Donald Trump began sharing details of Walz' nearly 30-year-old DUI on social media.

In an 2018 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Walz described the episode as a gut-check moment. He had gotten married the year before. That night, he was driving home from watching college football with some friends. His wife Gwen Walz described to the Star Tribune how she told her husband after the arrest that now that he’s married, he has obligations and “can’t make dumb choices.”

The officer at the scene noted that Walz’s silver Miata was going 96 miles per hour in an area where the speed limit was 55. When Walz saw a car pull out quickly behind him, he sped up thinking someone was chasing him, Walz’s lawyer explained to the court. Walz stopped when the officer turned on the patrol car’s flashing lights.

The family of a French explorer who died in a submersible implosion has filed a more than $50 million lawsuit, saying the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the sub’s operator of gross negligence.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded during a voyage to the famed Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip aboard the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a company in Washington state that has since suspended operations.

Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit. He was regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable people about the famous wreck. Attorneys for his estate said in an emailed statement that the “doomed submersible” had a “troubled history,” and that OceanGate failed to disclose key facts about the vessel and its durability.

According to the lawsuit, the Titan “dropped weights” about 90 minutes into its dive, indicating the team had aborted or attempted to abort the dive.

“While the exact cause of failure may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan’s crew would have realized exactly what was happening,” the lawsuit states. “Common sense dictates that the crew were well aware they were going to die, before dying.”

The lawsuit goes on to say: “The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”

A Mississippi man authorities are calling a “suspected serial killer” has been charged in connection with the 1977 strangulation deaths of three women in Southern California, prosecutors in California said Wednesday.

Warren Luther Alexander, 73, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and also faces special allegations of multiple murders, according to a news release from the Ventura County district attorney’s office. He was extradited on Tuesday from Surry County, North Carolina, where he was awaiting prosecution in connection with a 1992 homicide, according to the release.

In February 2023, the cold case unit of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department started re-examining the killings of Kimberly Carol Fritz, 18, Velvet Ann Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Ann Rodriguez, 21, officials said.

All three victims were sex workers and all died by strangulation, said District Attorney Erik Nasarenko in a news conference Thursday. Prosecutors believe Alexander initially picked each of the women up for sexual activity. Although detectives saw similarities among the crimes, the cases went cold.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called on Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell to resign Wednesday over his handling of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Sonya Massey – a request Campbell dismissed as “political maneuvering during a tragic event.”

“We join the Massey family in calling for Sheriff Campbell’s resignation immediately so the Springfield and Sangamon County community can begin to rebuild and restore trust between citizens and the sheriff’s department,” Pritzker and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said in a joint statement.

Good. He did hire someone with a list of past issues and he has not done everything he should have to align himself with the victim's family as I seem to understand it.

On July 6, former deputy sheriff Sean Grayson responded to a report of a prowler at Massey’s home. Bodycam footage from another deputy showed Massey saying she rebuked Grayson, and the former deputy threatening the 36-year-old Black woman. Grayson asked Massey to remove a pan of water from a burner on the stove. Grayson moved away from the steaming water.

“Sonya turned to face me holding the pot. I did not know the type of liquid that was boiling,” Grayson wrote in his report three days after the incident.

“I advised Sonya to put the boiling liquid down. Sonya stated (she) was going to rebuke me in the name of Jesus. She stated this twice. I interpreted this to mean she was going to kill me.”

The encounter ended with Grayson shooting Massey in the head and failing to render aid. Massey’s family has said that Sonya Massey struggled with mental health issues.

I do not know how he would have come to those conclusions... Just bizarre.

He was far from her. She had lifted the pot. Everything that happens next happens so quickly while he is standing 10+ feet away from her, there's no way she posed any kind of threat to him, and she makes that enigmatic statement about rebuking him in the name of Jesus...

My first guess is that the meaning of this is purely verbal, almost like an incantation, "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus" doesn't make me think of a threat of violence, it makes me think of something like words from an exorcism or a harsh condemnation that I am doing something unchristian...

And this lunatic cop shoots her in the head, I think even technically after she quickly ducked down to put the previously boiling pot on the floor.

It's such an open & shut case - I feel insulted that they are trying to couch the events like that and gaslight us.

A second person was arrested Tuesday and charged in acts of antisemitic vandalism at the New York City homes of two Brooklyn Museum leaders earlier this summer, court records show.

Samuel Seligson faces four felony counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime and four misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief for vandalizing, along with others, the homes of Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak and President and Chief Operating Officer Kimberly Panicek Trueblood in June, according to a criminal complaint.

The investigation remains ongoing, according to a New York City Police Department spokesperson.

CNN has reached out to Seligson’s attorney Leena Widdi for comment. Seligson is on supervised release and is scheduled to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court in November, prosecutors said.

Last week police arrested Taylor Pelton, 28, on the same charges, according to court records. Her attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, has declined comment. Pelton is on supervised release and is scheduled to be arraigned in October, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s Office.

Red paint was splattered on the front doors and windows of Pasternak’s home on June 12, and a sign was left hanging in the entrance filled with red handprints that referenced her and the museum, CNN previously reported.

Red inverted triangles were also painted on the windows and doors. The red inverted triangle is symbol used by the Hamas military wing to indicate Israeli and Jewish targets, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Also on June 12, the vandals also allegedly spraypainted the front and sidewalk of Trueblood’s building, and hung a banner decorated with red inverted triangles and referencing her by name, according to the complaint.

The United States has seen rising levels of antisemitic incidents since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, according to data from the ADL. The most recent data from the organization, which has tracked antisemitic incidents in the US since 1979, found a 140% increase in incidents from 2022 to 2023, with a “dramatic” increase taking place after October 7. According to NYPD data, 329 hate crime incidents took place in New York City during the first half of 2024, with 200 involving Jewish targets.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfil its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West towards Asia and Russia.

“In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant centre of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighbouring Romania.

A Labour councillor has been suspended after he was seen saying far-right rioters should have their throats cut.

Ricky Jones, who sits on Dartford Borough Council, was seen riling up the crowd in Walthamstow last night as he railed against 'disgusting nasty fascists'.

Speaking to the crowd of hundreds of people Jones, who is an organiser for the TSSA union, accused members of the far-right of putting National Front stickers with razor blades hidden behind them on trains.

He then launched into an inflammatory speech, saying: 'They are disgusting nasty fascists and we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.'

This drew some cheers and sporadic applause from people stood around him, with some people looking shocked at his reference to cutting throats, before he leads the crowd in a chant of 'Free Palestine'.