Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Vladimir Putin hunkers down for fear of assassination

Austria expels 3 Russian Embassy staff over suspected antenna spying in ViennaAustria has expelled three Russian Embassy employees suspected of espionage using antennas on diplomatic buildings


 

Vladimir Putin hunkers down for fear of assassination


Russia has stepped up security protocols for President Vladimir Putin amid fears of assassination as he grows more isolated and absorbed by his war in Ukraine. 


Anastasia Stognei and Max Seddon in Berlin and Leila Abboud in Paris
May force be with you
Russia has stepped up security protocols for President Vladimir Putin amid fears of assassination as he grows more isolated and absorbed by his war in Ukraine.
In recent months, Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), which guards top officials, has sharply tightened security around the president. He spends more time in underground bunkers micromanaging the war and has grown more detached from civilian affairs, according to people who know Putin in Moscow and a person close to European intelligence services. 
Putin’s isolation has increased in recent years, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic. But as of March, the Kremlin’s concern over a coup d’état or an assassination attempt, specifically involving drones, has intensified sharply, said the person close to European intelligence. 
“The shock of Ukraine’s drone Operation Spiderweb is still there,” a person familiar with Putin told the FT. Last year, Ukrainian drones attacked Russian airfields beyond the Arctic Circle. Security fears were additionally fuelled by the US’s seizure of Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro in January, said a second person also familiar with the president. 
In response, the FSO has further tightened stringent security measures. Putin has cut down his visits and security checks for people meeting him in person have been tightened further, said the person close to European intelligence.
Vladimir Putin meets with representatives of Russia's indigenous peoples, some dressed in traditional clothing, during an educational event.
Vladimir Putin meets representatives of Russia’s indigenous community in Moscow on April 30 © Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik/Kremlin/EPA/Shutterstock
The president and his family have stopped going to their residences in the Moscow region and in north-western Valdai. Putin is spending more time in bunkers, including in the Krasnodar area in southern Russia, working from there for several weeks, while state media use pre-recorded footage to project normality.
Staff in the president’s immediate circle, including cooks, photographers and bodyguards, have been barred from taking public transport and using mobile phones or internet-enabled devices around him. Surveillance systems have been installed in their homes.
People in Russia who know Putin said recent internet shutdowns in Moscow are also at least partly related to the president’s security and anti-drone protection. 
FSO agents now conduct large-scale checks with the help of dog units, and are stationed along the banks of the Moscow river, ready to react in case of drone attacks, according to European intelligence. 
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Security concerns are not limited to Putin. According to the person close to European intelligence, security service representatives at a meeting with the president late last year blamed one another for failures to protect Russia’s top military personnel, including the killing of Fanil Sarvarov, a lieutenant general — the latest in a series of Ukraine-linked attacks. 
Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB, the federal security service, blamed the defence ministry, which, unlike other agencies, lacks a unit dedicated to protecting senior officials. Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard and Putin’s former bodyguard, denied responsibility, citing limited resources.
Ultimately, the president called for calm and tasked the FSO with ensuring the security of 10 senior generals, including three deputies, to Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, who until then had been the only officer under such protection.
Bar chart of Number of events attended in January–March each year showing Putin’s public presence continues to decline
The tightening of security measures has coincided with Putin, who traditionally has been more absorbed in geopolitics, dropping domestic policies to concentrate on the war, said two people who speak to him.
The president holds daily meetings with military officials, focusing on operational details such as the names of small Ukrainian settlements that are changing hands. Non-war-related officials, in contrast, are typically granted an audience only once every few weeks or months.
“Putin spends 70 per cent of his time running the war and the other 30 per cent meeting [someone like] the president of Indonesia or dealing with the economy,” said one person who knows him, adding that the only way to get more access is through “doing more war”.
Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst, said: “Putin is like the new Banksy sculpture in London [a man carrying a flag that covers his face], he does not want to see or hear. He listens only to the security services, which now run all spheres of life, and hopes that people will adapt to this as the new normal.”
The president’s remoteness has fuelled frustration among Russians as they are growing tired of the war and grapple with mounting domestic issues.
According to state-backed as well as independent pollsters, Putin’s approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since autumn 2022, when he announced a partial mobilisation, prompting hundreds of thousands of young men to flee the country. 
Line chart of Percentage of respondents showing Trust in Putin reached its lowest since 2022
Social media is filled with videos of ordinary Russians and influencers criticising the authorities over internet crackdowns, taxes for small businesses and livestock culls in Siberia.
The most prominent has been Viktoria Bonya, a Monaco-based lifestyle blogger. In an 18-minute video address to Putin last month, she said that “people are afraid of him”. The clip gained more than 1.5mn likes.
While Bonya made it clear that she does not oppose the regime, the scale of the video’s reach forced the Kremlin to acknowledge it had seen it.
After Bonya’s speech, Putin publicly addressed internet crackdowns for the first time, urging officials to “inform citizens” properly and not to “focus solely on bans”.
On April 27, Putin made his second public appearance this year, visiting a rhythmic gymnastics school in his native St Petersburg. A video released by the Kremlin shows him in a brief exchange with a group of girls in black leotards, at the end of which he kisses one of them on the forehead.
Vladimir Putin holds a fencing foil while facing a fencer in protective gear at the sports complex, with several men in suits nearby.
The president visits a gymnastics school in St Petersburg on April 27, only his second public appearance this year © Gavriil Grigorov/Reuters
The Kremlin has long used such staged interactions with ordinary people to demonstrate Putin’s approachability.
“A sure sign that Putin is worried about his falling approval ratings: he’s publicly kissing children again,” said Farida Rustamova, independent Vlast newsletter founder and political analyst, referring to similar instances, such as when Putin kissed a boy on the stomach in 2006, apparently in an attempt to portray the president as closer to the masses.
The president’s few trips and meetings so far this year, compared with at least 17 in 2025, are another sign of tighter security and a diminished focus on domestic affairs. Last year’s engagements included visits to the Kursk region bordering Ukraine and to military headquarters where he appeared in uniform at least five times. 
“The gap between what Putin is willing to deal with and what is expected of him is widening,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, adding that this was unlikely to change any time soon. 
The public’s “bursts of discontent will only become more frequent”, she added.

Monday, May 04, 2026

On the futility of border walls

 On the Propaganda of Early Nazism, and How We See it in America Today. “Unlike other political systems, fascism was not meant to be intellectualized or discussed; it was meant to be experienced.”


On the futility of border walls. “The Ozymandian ruins of many such walls litter our ancient and modern landscapes, because for as long as humanity has built hard borders, people have inevitably found ways to cross, topple or simply bypass them


Border crossing story


And we also lived by Marta Chamillová’s fierce folkloric dictum: “Fitting in is death. Remember that. You want to stand apart from your peers. Always.


Farewell, Voting Rights Act

Adam Serwer writing about the yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that guts much of whatever remains of the Voting Rights Act:

In states with large Black populations that remain under Republican control — half of the Black American population resides in the South — lawmakers will now be able to draw districts that dilute Black residents’ voting power. In his opinion for the right-wing majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “in considering the constitutionality of a districting scheme, courts must treat partisan advantage like any other race-neutral aim: a constitutionally permissible criterion that States may rely on as desired.” The Court’s decision is consonant with the philosophy, articulated by Kilpatrick in his earlier days, that the state is oppressive when it interferes with the right to discriminate, and respects liberty when it allows discrimination. And the decision fits just as well with Kilpatrick’s later spin on that philosophy: Attempts to ban racial discrimination are themselves discriminatory — against white people.

What Kilpatrick wanted, and what the Roberts Court is making possible, is a country where white people can maintain their political dominance at the expense of Americans who are not white. The anticaste provisions of the Reconstruction amendments, intended by their authors to reverse the “horrid blasphemy” that America was a white man’s country, are being inverted to defend that dominance. This is not the color-blindness of Martin Luther King Jr., but what the scholar Ian Haney López has called “reactionary colorblindness,” the purpose of which is to maintain racial hierarchy through superficially neutral means. It takes the view that the Constitution’s “color-blindness” renders any attempt to remedy anti-Black racism unconstitutional, because by definition that would involve making racial distinctions. Similarly, the ruling in this case does not explicitly overturn the VRA’s ban on racial discrimination in voting so much as rewrite it to allow such discrimination.

I can’t tell you how much I fucking hate this, and every other stupid fucking thing conservatives have done to this country. I try to keep my cynicism (or what I like to think of as being realistic) about the American political situation off the site for the most part, but seeing this decision come down yesterday morning let all the air out of my balloon. Not that it contained much air to begin with…the balloon is shot right through with holes from the past decade+ of authoritarian shenanigans and general acquiescence of institutions that are supposed to protect us.

On a personal note, in these moments I find it increasingly difficult to go on — being engaged here, keeping up with the news, highlighting positives in the world, showcasing the enthusiasms of others, informing ppl of harms & how they can help, hyping hope, not letting the bastards grind me down. It’s nothing new — I’ve talked about it here before — but as the situation becomes more unstable & uncertain (or rather: as I grow more certain about its instability & fuckedness), it grows more difficult to keep going. I know this is self-defeating & self-centered, but I’m angry and scared and grieving and tired. I’m gonna publish this before I just delete the whole stupid thing.




Operation Atlantic group of UK, Canadian and US enforcers shut down crypto romance group funding; freeze $12 million

 South Africa court rules in favor of extraditing nine members of the Black Axe to the US over romance and BEC fraud

 
US files case to strip Nigerian man of US citizenship; was convicted head of stolen ID tax refund operation
 
FTC fraud data.  I’ve covered the annual fraud data from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, and also data from Australia. I expected the FTC to release its compilation of fraud data for 2024, but I’ve not seen that. Sources report that even though the FTC has done this every year since 2008, it is not doing a fraud data book this year.  Sad to see. Of course the FTC has its tableau site where one can find data, but it is not nearly as easy to get the big picture. In my view this is a loss for the public.
 
Reviews and recommendation” We went to see Operation Hail Mary, at a local movie theater -- and it is just excellent.  Written by Andy Weir, author of The Martian, it is very much a crowd pleaser, with stellar reviews -- and no politics at all.  Sure to be one of the best movies of the year. And its worth seeing it in a theater on a big screen.
 

Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumorFTC and CFPBBenefit TheftScam CompoundsBusiness Email compromise fraud Bitcoin and Crypto FraudRansomware and data breachesRomance Fraud and Sextortion People

Biometric: The evolving news landscape: Comparing media habits and trust between teens and adults

 "Why is it controversial to step in when someone’s getting bullied and try to stop it?” 

—Billie Eilish


“Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing list includes hot ice and even ice that conducts electricity.”




The evolving news landscape: Comparing media habits and trust between teens and adults

The Evolving News Landscape: Comparing media habits and trust between teens and adults is the latest study from the Media Insight Project, a collaboration of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the American Press Institute, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. This study features a combined sample 1,092 respondents ages 18 and older and 1,009 respondents ages 13-17, both nationally representative. 

The new survey’s large nationally representative sample provides a unique opportunity for a detailed analysis of America’s most diverse generations. This report from the study will examine the news behaviors and views of five distinct age groups: 13- to 17-year-olds, 18- to 34-year-olds, 35- to 49-year-olds, 50- to 64-year-olds, and adults 65 and older. The sample allows us to explore how new-related habits and views vary across different age groups.

Download the study PDF here.


Over 80% of US government agencies already use AI agents – and it’s only the beginning

ZDNET: “According to IDC research focused on public-sector readiness, agentic AI is no longer in the experimental phase for government; it is a leadership mandate. IDC finds that while many government agencies are implementing agent-driven workflows, few have moved beyond pilots. The rate of agentic AI adoption in government is due to several factors:

  • Budgetary pressures
  • Sovereignty and compliance, including requirements for data resistance, algorithmic transparency, and accountability
  • Workforce disruption, which points to skill gaps in cybersecurity and machine learning operations
  • Citizen expectations for faster, more personalized, and equitable services…

Trump blames No Kings for assassination attemptPopular Information


Cole Allen Hated the Democratic Party, Too Ken Klippenstein


US bill would require warrants for digital surveillance, biometric searches Biometrics Update. In a sign of what I am willing to pay, literally and figuratively, to try to preserve a modicum of privacy, I refused a free hotel for a long layover (the Dubai Connect service) because I would have had to enter the UAE, which meant an iris scan. I have ruled out the EU and UK permanently because they have the same requirement. I went instead to a pod hotel in the airport, which was not great (too cold!!!)


Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is preparing banks to collect citizenship data




CNBC:” Banks in the U.S. may not like the idea of being forced to collect citizenship data on customers, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says they better be prepared for the task. 

“If Treasury and the banking regulators say it’s their job, it’s their job,” Bessent told CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the Invest in America Forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. An executive order that has been discussed for months took a step closer to reality earlier this week when Bessent said in an  The planned EO is one more plank in President Donald Trump’s broader effort to tie his immigration policy to collection of information in the United States, including for voting and Census efforts. In the U.S., citizenship documents are not necessary in order to open a bank account. Banks are required to verify identity. 

The U.S., like many countries, uses “know your customer” rules for bank accounts to prevent money laundering and other forms of financial crime, verifying client identities, assessing risks, and monitoring transactions to prevent fraud. Laws including the Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA, and the USA Patriot Act also underpin efforts to verify customers. Banks collect Social Security numbers, or an individual taxpayer identification number, or ITIN, names, dates of birth and addresses, among other documents. 

But that doesn’t satisfy Bessent. “Why can unknown foreign nationals come and open a bank account?” he said at the CNBC event. “Our bank executives job is to know your customer. How do you know your customer if you don’t know if they have legal or illegal status, whether they are a U.S. citizen or green card holder?” 

Overseas, citizenship information is more often required for banking access, but there is no universal mandate. Bessent told Eisen: “Every other country does it. Every other country. … There should be stricter rules.” Republicans have voiced support for the idea…”


Trump fought to keep the ballroom fundraising contract secret. Here’s what’s in it

Follow-up to Banquet of Greed: Trump Ballroom Donors Feast on Federal Funds and Favors – See Washington Post – no paywall: “The agreement governing hundreds of millions in private donations was kept secret until a watchdog group sued and a judge ordered it disclosed [the full text of this document is embedded in this WaPo article – view the 14 page PDF without the paywall here]…

“The Trump administration’s failure to disclose this contract was flatly unlawful,” said Wendy Liu, a Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel on the lawsuit, filed after the Park Service and the Interior Department failed to fulfill a public records request for the document. 

“The American people are entitled to transparency over this multi-million-dollar project.” The secrecy surrounding the contract mirrors the administration’s broader approach to the project. White House officials have declined to disclose the total amount raised, the identities of all donors or, until recently, basic details about the building’s design. Court documents show Trump knew he was going to tear down the East Wing at least two months before doing so, but he never told the public. 

The contract provisions, taken together, allow wealthy donors with business before the federal government to contribute anonymously to a sitting president’s pet project, while exempting the White House from key conflict of interest safeguards and limiting scrutiny by Congress and the public…The contract resembles templates used by the Park Service for more routine fundraising partnerships  with several notable differences: 

Provisions peppered throughout the agreement prevent the signatories from revealing the identities of anonymous donors, and a review process for detecting conflicts of interest with the Park Service and Interior Department makes no mention of doing the same for the president, other White House officials or the 14 other executive departments he oversees.

Sunday, May 03, 2026

EarthIndex - May Day Protest from Around the country





Circular Breathing





What’s the secret to a great cup of tea?

Knowable Magazine – From where the Camellia sinensis bush is grown to whether the leaves are withered or fermented, much can influence the popular drink’s molecular and flavor profile: “How about a cuppa? Tea is the world’s most popular drink, except for plain old water. 

Whether we’re talking matcha, Earl Grey or oolong, it’s all made from the leaves of one species of plant, Camellia sinensis. (Any other tea-like brew is technically a tisane or herbal tea.) 

That one tea plant yields teas in an astonishing rainbow of varieties: green and black, yellow and white, and other types and subtypes. The leaves contain hundreds to thousands of different molecules that contribute to the beverage’s aroma, flavor and potential health benefits, says Young-Shick Hong, a metabolomics specialist at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea. 

Until recently, knowledge about such tea molecules was limited, and sometimes incorrect, says Kelly Miller, product development and innovation manager at the tea retailer DavidsTea in Mont-Royal, Quebec. Now, thanks to advanced scientific methods, scientists are getting a closer look at the molecules in tea leaves…”

“One of the greatest challenges for conservationists has been detecting environmental harms before it’s too late. Now Earth Index enables users to easily find and act on damaging activities, like illegal mining, in minutes not months…

  • Processing satellite imagery and developing models requires expertise. Scanning imagery is tedious and slow. Earth Index streamlines the process — find anything, anywhere, in less than a day.
  • Cutting edge AI foundation models – Large Earth foundation models are trained to understand any feature on the planet. Earth Index applies and deploys these models in a working environment.
  • Search in seconds – Earth Index is an interactive application, with infrastructure designed to support rapid exploration over all regions of the Earth directly by users…”

Marching for earth 



LIVESTREAM of May Day Protest from Around the country Payday Report



Saturday, May 02, 2026

Archives Antico

RC John Farhana  Taking Italian food back to its original traditional roots Rosso Antico


5 more collections that put their archives online for everyone


Card Catalog: 5 more collections that put their archives online for everyone  From 2,000 years of medical illustration to vintage software preserved in a browser, these five free digital archives cover an enormous range of human record-keeping.

  • Wellcome Collection(wellcomecollection.org) Over 100,000 images spanning 2,000 years of medical history, all free to download under Creative Commons licensing. The earliest item is an Egyptian prescription on papyrus. The collection includes medieval illuminated manuscripts, 16th-century anatomical drawings with hinged paper flaps that reveal the organs underneath, and etchings by Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh.
  • National Palace Museum, Taiwan(digitalarchive.npm.gov.…) One of the world’s largest collections of Chinese art and artifacts, spanning 8,000 years from the Neolithic period to the modern era. The museum has digitized 70,000 high-resolution images from its holdings of nearly 700,000 pieces, many of which were evacuated from Beijing’s Forbidden City during China’s civil war in 1948 and never returned.
  • Internet Archive MS-DOS Game Library (<a “https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games”>archive.org/details/sof…) Over 6,000 vintage games from the 1980s and 1990s, playable directly in the browser through an in-browser emulator called EM-DOSBOX. The collection exists because of eXoDOS, a long-running fan preservation project that tracked down software written for hardware configurations that no longer exist.
  • Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (collection.cooperhewitt…) More than 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries, from ancient Roman marble to Pre-Columbian textiles to contemporary 3D-printed furniture. The museum holds the largest collection of wallcoverings in North America, and the entire catalog is searchable online with an open API and downloadable datasets.
  • Endangered Archives Programme(eap.bl.uk) Over 16 million digitized images and 35,000 sound recordings from more than 500 projects across 90+ countries, in over 100 languages and scripts. The program funds digitization of archives at risk of destruction or decay, from Timbuktu manuscripts threatened by conflict to palm-leaf texts in Southeast Asia. Originals stay in their countries of origin, with digital copies made freely available online.